From Lives to Discurso in the biographies of Thomas More: Roper, Harpsfield and Herrera

Abstract

This article compares the books about the Lifes of Thomas More written by Roper and Harpsfield and the work Tomás Moro by Fernando de Herrera. The comparison is taken as a case in point of the divergent early development of the biographical genre in England and in Spain. The three texts were written by Catholic humanists, but under different contexts, which produced different kinds of text. Roper’s and Harpsfield’s Catholicism, marked by a close contact with the Morean tradition, the English form of Counter-Reformation under Mary, and the Elizabethan reversion to Protestantism, makes them drift towards an early form of modern biography. Fernando de Herrera, however, sets out to write his text from the background of the Spanish Counter-Reformation and a different discursive and textual conception of life writing.