The Biographical Source as a Factor in Shaping National Artistic Traditions in Education and Culture

The article explores the role of the biographical source as a factor in the formation of national and artistic traditions in education and culture. The author analyzes the ways in which autobiographical texts, letters, memoirs, and diaries of cultural figures, artists, and educators transmit values, model educational systems, and preserve collective memory. Considerable attention is paid to conceptual approaches to the interpretation of biographical writing as a form of cultural heritage and a mechanism for decolonial rethinking of traditions in global and local contexts. The research methodology included narrative analysis, comparative historical approach, structural and semantic analysis of sources, and the case method. The object of analysis was the autobiographical documents of six European and world cultural figures, on the basis of which the role of personal texts in the formation of artistic, educational, and philosophical paradigms was systematized. The theoretical framework is based on interdisciplinary works in cultural studies, pedagogy, and identity history. The results of the study show that the biographical source is a tool for recording experience and an effective means of forming a tradition as a system of intergenerational transmission of knowledge, aesthetic norms and pedagogical models. It is noted that the narrative structure of such sources forms a cultural identity and ensures the integration of personal experience into the national discourse. The article proposes an analytical model for interpreting a biographical text as a dynamic component of the educational and cultural heritage.