8.4–Analyzing Nonfiction in Terms of the Author

Shifting from a wider focus on the cultural aspects of the author’s identity to a narrower focus on the author’s individual background and life experiences provides additional contextual insight. A biographical focus can emphasize:

• The impacts of key decisions a writer made during their life,
• Formative experiences they’ve had, including life events and prior careers;
• Key influences from family, friends, mentors, and communities;
• Their body of work as a whole, beyond one particular text.

An argument for any one of these emphases, or a combination of some, can be made when determining the biggest biographical influences on the author’s choices. A biographical focus on Thomas Paine, for example, could argue that the staymaking business he owned in England, or the time he served in the British Navy as a privateer, influenced his later sympathies with colonial merchants. Alternatively, a researcher could instead emphasize the years Paine spent in Lewes, a British town that had a reputation for being anti-monarchy since the English Civil War, and where he first became involved in political activism. Another potential area of emphasis could be Paine’s earlier political articles and pamphlets, including one he wrote against an excise tax in Britain, or his editorship with the pro-working class Pennsylvania Magazine and his close friendship with fellow printer Benjamin Franklin. Subsequent events in Paine’s life following the American Revolution, such as his involvement in the French Revolution, could also be mentioned. However, the chronology of these events makes their influence on Common Sense more difficult to establish.

Similarly, Frederick Douglass’s life offers many potential focal points for a biographical analysis of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” It would be hard to imagine, for example, a biographical analysis of the speech that didn’t reference Douglass’s own 1845 memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This memoir accounts for a number of seminal moments in Douglass’s early life, including his learning to read, his being transferred among multiple enslavers, his physical confrontation with an overseer, and his eventual escape to New York City (though the details of this escape would not be revealed until later, since Douglass did not want inadvertently to prevent other enslaved Blacks from taking advantage of his same method). After he freed himself, Douglass’s time among other abolitionists in Massachusetts and/or his ordainment as a minister in New York could also be emphasized as significant influences on his arguments and writing style. His close relationships with other anti-slavery and pro-women’s suffrage activists, such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony could also inform a biographical analysis. In addition to his anti-slavery work in the United States, Douglass also spent two years (1845-1847) in Ireland and England, where slavery had ended in the prior decade. The same reserved-to-impassioned stylistic shift in “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” can also be observed in some of Douglass’s earlier works, including his articles in The North Star, the nation’s most prominent abolitionist newspaper. Douglass also published an open letter in The North Star to his former master, Thomas Auld, whom he condemns for his inhumane treatment.

As both Douglass’s and Paine’s cases demonstrate, a biographical analysis of a nonfiction literary work does not negate the value or contradict the findings of a cultural analysis of that work. Rather, analyzing both biographical and cultural contextual layers enriches each of them. A cultural analysis provides an overview of the social, political, and historical dynamics that shape an author’s life, and the experiences they have and the choices they make situated in these dynamics demonstrate both the influence of those dynamics and the significance of the individual author’s agency.