ABSTRACT
When it comes to examining the intersection of history and fiction, there are few genres more rich and intriguing than Renaissance biography.1 As scholars have long observed, the genre of biography rose in popularity during the Renaissance, and in crucial ways, it occupied a liminal position between history and fiction. On the one hand, Renaissance biographies were historical narratives (though not always organized chronologically) that took as their subject matter the lives and works of renowned individuals. On the other hand, Renaissance biographies also offered idealized, and thus fictionalized, accounts of people’s lives, adhering to the notion that extraordinary individuals could-and should-be exemplary to the wider public. This fluidity in content, in which crafted fiction alternated with established fact, was also reflected formally in its narrative techniques. Narrative principles did not become fixed in the genre until the seventeenth century, so Renaissance biographers drew freely on various historical, literary, and oratorical forms to shape their narratives.2
