What's the definition of a biographical approach?

Question

Like, from a Language Arts teacher's view.

Answer 1

There are several ways of looking at a literary text. It may be valuable to separate some of them in order to become aware how one always has some preconceived ideas about what one reads. These may be political, religious, or economic to mention a few. Very often one studies a text in many ways simultaneosly, so why not look at some of the most common approaches that have been used by literary critics so that we see how they vary:

The historical -biographical approach

This method places the author in the focus, very often in the form of studying his private life and personal experiences.

link between authors’ private lives and their texts that is of  great interest ; other texts by the author will tell us more about  each of the by comparison ; the historical background is vital for an understanding ; the ideology of a writer needs to be found out ; the reason why a text was  created-  (need of money or psychological depressions etc) ; childhood experience throws light  on author’s texts