Peter France and William St. Clair, eds. Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 335 pp. + index. ISBN 0-19-726269-4, $49.95.
This volume in the British Academy Centenary Monographs series offers eighteen essays by as many contributors. As the following summaries may suggest, seven or eight of the essays are first-rate, a half dozen are readable but unstimulating, and a few seem confused or restate the obvious.
Among the highlights are two learned, informative studies of early biographical traditions. In "From Biography to Hagiography," Sergei S. Averintsev clarifies the meaning of biographia, hagiographa, and other key terms in classical life writing, and takes up the old question of whether the Gospels can be considered part of Hellenistic biography (no). Martin McLaughlin memorably surveys "Biography and Autobiography in the Italian Renaissance," focusing on the emergence during the period of secular biographies written in the …
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