What is Life history – Definition of the Concept

Definition of

Life story

A history is a narrationa story or one exhibition of events, whether real or fictional. The concept of lifeon the other hand, has a great variety of interpretations, but in this case we will refer to life as the existence.

This allows us to infer that a life story it’s a story with the events that one person lived throughout its existence. Of course, said account will never be exhaustive since it is impossible to review every event that occurred in the life of a subject from birth to the present or his death.

Article Topics

  • Narrative of a life story
  • Biographies and autobiographies
  • Related Topics Tree

Narrative of a life story

The life history, therefore, usually summarize the salient facts of an individual’s existence. The choice of what is narrated will depend on the person’s own perspective (in case it is the person who is speaking) or whoever is telling the life story.

When creating a life story, it is vital to carry out a series of necessary steps to achieve the expected result. Thus, the professionals of this type of documents coincide in emphasizing that interviews must be undertaken with all the people who, in one way or another, can reveal part of the existence of the person who is dealing with the story.

Relatives, friends, couples or colleagues in the professional field are the ones who should be interviewed when it comes to obtaining the greatest possible number of data regarding the existence of the person in question. In the same way, it is also vital to carry out the use of newspaper clippings, personal objects, photographs…

In addition, it is equally essential, before starting to write, to establish a chronological order of all the documents that are held on the individual because, in this way, it is how the succession of events that were fundamental in life can be clear. of that one.

It can help you: Metanarrative

Biographies and autobiographies

We can link the life history to the Biographywhich is the written narrative that summarizes the main events in a person’s life or the literary genre in which these narratives are framed.

In this sense, we would have to qualify the difference between what is biography and autobiography. The first is the one written by a person, usually a journalist or writer, exposing the most important events in the life of another: birth, failures, successes, marriages, children, accidents, family tragedies…

The second, the autobiography, is for its part that document that an individual in question writes for himself narrating all the events that have marked his existence. In this way, he gives readers an account of his ideas, feelings, sensations, the most relevant episodes of his life…

Every person has a life story. However, the usual thing is that these stories are made public or become biographies only in cases where the protagonist enjoys popularity or recognition, since then his life becomes interesting for the rest of the population. society.

Another use of the notion of life history refers to a story that, for some reason, marked a person’s life.

See also: Narrative sequence