Biofiction and Fictional Metabiography in Richard Beard’s Lazarus is Dead

Abstract

Richard Beard’s Lazarus is Dead constructs its hybrid biography–biofiction out of the remnants of the biblical Lazarus’s afterlife; the ways that Lazarus was remembered in art and literature are mined as if they hold the key to autobiographical truth. Reading this novel as an example of a fictional metabiography, to use Ansgar Nünning’s typology of biofictions, sheds light on the way that the novel deconstructs the processes of life writing. What Beard posits in Lazarus is Dead is an epistemology of the biography that places the fictional process at the center of all forms of life writing.

Keywords:

• Biofiction
• metabiography
• Richard Beard
• Jesus novel

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Beard, 2.

2 Ramey, xiii.

3 Lackey, “Locating and Defining the Bio in Biofiction,” 3.

4 Lackey, The American Biographical Novel, 15.

5 Ehrman, 65.

6 Crook, 33.

7 Lackey, The American Biographical Novel, 149.

8 Crook, “Jesus Novels: Solving Problems with Fiction,” 505.

9 Wright, 10.

10 Wright, 26.

11 Greene, 210.

12 Moore, 7.

13 Lackey, The American Biographical Novel, 183.

14 Hutcheon, 3.

15 Vidal, 205.

16 Hutcheon, 3.

17 Vidal, 220.

18 Nünning, 368.

19 Nünning, 368.

20 Nünning, 376.

21 Beard, 7.

22 Beard, 7.

23 Beard, 218.

24 Beard, 1.

25 Beard, 1.

26 Beard, 1.

27 Ehrman.

28 Nünning, 372.

29 Beard, 2.

30 Vannucci, 386.

31 Beard, 245.

32 Beard, 245–6.

33 Beard, 246.

34 White.

35 Beard, 9.

36 Schabert, 13.

37 Munslow, 82.

38 Beard, 12.

39 Beard, 12.

40 Beard, 12.

41 Nünning, 375.

42 Lukács, 267.

43 Beard, 239.

44 Beard, 207.

45 Beard, Acts of the Assassins, 301.

46 Beard, Acts of the Assassins, 301.

47 Gallagher, 1.

48 Pascal, 48.

49 Gallagher, 5.

50 Raghunath.

51 Beard, Lazarus is Dead, 251.

52 Beard, 255.

53 Beard, 255.

54 Nünning, 375.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Russo

Associate Professor Stephanie Russo is Discipline Chair of Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She is the author of The Anachronistic Turn: Historical Fictions, Drama, Film and Television (Routledge, 2023) and The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn (Palgrave, 2020). She has published widely on women’s writing, biofiction, and historical fiction.