The most cause of work of art is its creator, the author, and hence an explanation in term of personality and the life of the writer has been one of the oldest and best established methods of literary study.
Biography can be judged in relation to the light it throws on the actual production of poetry, but we can, of course, defend it and justify it as a study of the man of genius, of his moral, intellectual and emotional development, which has its own intrinsic interest. Finally, we can think of biography as affording materials for a systems...