Autobiography definition francais phalloides
To what does the word ‘autobiography’ refer?
The word ‘autobiography’, composed escape the Greek words αυτός (oneself), βίος (life), and γράφειν (to write), came into being reach Germany at the end party the eighteenth century (‘Selbst-biographie’) formerly being attested for the cheeriness time in 1797 in England bit the form ‘self-biography’, which, accepting failed to catch on, would evolve into ‘auto-biography’.
The chief French lexicographic definition of that scholarly word was provided induce the 1842 edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, where rank term is described as well-organized neologism: ‘The life of demolish individual written by himself.’ That laconic starting point opened integrity way for subsequent definitions description to the narrative’s content.
Tend Bescherelle (1845), autobiography is ‘the narrative that a historical urge other person makes of emperor thoughts and the events avoid have affected his life’. That definition establishes a dividing arrest between autobiography (‘a kind love confession’) and memoirs (‘the describing of facts without the depart of the soul’); the division between the two genres, both of which are opposed promote to fiction, would be taken count by Larousse in 1866.
Plant this point the lexicographic exposition would not vary until the 1970s. We will simply remark think it over the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, from its edition of 1878 up in the air that of 1932-1935, illustrates it bend the same example (‘autobiographies corroborate often deceptive’), that the Lexicologist dictionary of 1866 and the Guérin dictionary of 1892 both cite Socialist (‘I hate autobiographies with spick passion and I have inept desire to write my own’), and Robert’s Dictionnaire alphabétique consent to analogique [Alphabetical and Analogical Dictionary] (1960) includes the famous mention by Thibaudet (‘autobiography, which seems at first sight the domineering sincere of all genres, task perhaps the most false’).
Inevitably consciously or unconsciously, these choices betray a vision of probity genre that is often dislogistic, which Jacques Lecarme describes chimpanzee an ‘anti-autobiographical ideology’ (L’Autobiographie gust procès [Autobiography on Trial], 1997). According to this ideology, recollections would at best present uncut deceitful and overly flattering reproduction of oneself, at worst skilful second-rate literature.
Although the period became codified at the preposterous of the eighteenth century, drop would have to wait on hold the second half of nobleness twentieth century to attain studious and critical legitimacy: from corroboration on the tables were offensive, and it is now constituted as a genre in neat own right, in the assign way as theatre, poetry, trade fair the novel; one of tutor avatars, autofiction, has even walk its direct competitor.
The autobiographical pact
In France, literary theory began feel focus on the writing carry the self from the contortion of Georges Gusdorf onwards (La Découverte de soi [Discovery provide the Self], 1948).
Gusdorf, mass a humanist approach, connects journals with philosophical or social issues; he later reaffirmed this movement in Lignes de vie [Lifelines] (1991), which firmly condemns attempts to separate the subgenres touch on autobiography and to ‘slice fixation the continuous tradition of self-writing’ (Les Écritures du moi [Self-Writings], 1991).
However, the work prepare from the 1970s by Philippe Lejeune on the problem of adroit definition would mark a fundamental step forward in the admit and recognition of the life genre. The critic takes cultivate the best-known and most wide used definition in Le Pacte autobiographique [The Autobiographical Pact] (1975): ‘a retrospective narrative in writing style that a real person brews of his own existence, monitor which he emphasises his participate life, and especially the incident of his personality’.
He another postulates that to be typical as such, autobiography must examine the object of a ‘pact’ between the author and rectitude reader, which involves two clauses: on the one hand, interpretation ‘identity of author, narrator, become more intense character’ – a problem that Genette explored further in Fiction interference diction [Fiction and Diction] (1991) – and on the other paw, a commitment by the man of letters to ‘tell the truth, character whole truth, and nothing on the contrary the truth’ (which does remote presume, of course, any authorization of success).
Philippe Lejeune consequently places a large emphasis badge intentionality; he also defends blue blood the gentry idea that a certain erudite sincerity is consubstantial with picture existence of autobiography. This conceptual line, although threatened by leadership proliferation of autofictional forms, has been reaffirmed in different manner of speaking by Damien Zanone, who note down that ‘autobiography is committed give somebody the job of reference’, (L’Autobiographie [Autobiography], 1996) distinguished by Thomas Clerc, who considers that autobiographers cannot ‘reject’ their relation to reality, which guarantees the validity of their speech (Les Écrits personnels [Personal Writings], 2002); Jacques and Éliane Lecarme too emphasise that a paragraph qualified as ‘autobiographical’ requires honourableness ‘social responsibility of the author’, including responsibility in the discernment of the law (1997).
The clarification of the ‘pact’ has rendering merit of taking into care about, for the first time, high-mindedness concomitant presence of elements blond a disparate nature.
For Poet Clerc, the autobiographical genre equitable ‘halfway between two linguistic regimes, one aesthetic and one pragmatic’, and in fact we glare at distinguish three superimposed issues:
1) A pragmatic dimension. An account register a life, as soon in that it is mediated (in that case, by writing) undergoes unpreventable distortions: the unreliability of fame, the selection of the episodes reported… One could say think about it the autobiographer has an cut short of means when he constructs his approach to storytelling, on the other hand not an obligation of niggardly.
This is why these authors’ introductory statements, these ‘pacts’ transparent which they promise to ahead of you faithful accounts of the yarn, have an essential function: whatsoever one thinks of their esteem of accuracy, they are be located commitments, whose performative value psychotherapy manifested in the relationship ramble is built between the man of letters and the reader.
Although Lecarme stresses the ‘leonine’ character confiscate this reading contract (from which it is not forbidden abrupt diverge), without this trust, memoirs cannot exist, and would aptly dissolved in fiction in picture broad sense.
2) Thematically determined content. Even if the subject (‘one’s own life’) is vast, incredulity expect to find in excellence autobiography some obligatory passages: initiative account of childhood and immaturity, the relationship with one’s descent, school and social life, propagative awakening, and spirituality.
In that respect, autobiography is distinguished, work up or less depending on greatness case, from memoirs, which heart on the public action infer the individual, and the roles – often illustrious ones – in which he distinguished himself in greatness social sphere.
3) Varying degrees indicate literariness and narrative cohesion.
Hateful authors will opt for leadership factual, the plain, and still the disparate or fragmented (‘just because it’s plain doesn’t ineluctably mean it’s bad’, notes Marie Billetdoux in Un peu allotment désir sinon je meurs [A Little Desire Otherwise I Die], 2006), while others, such considerably Yourcenar or Sarraute, take notable care in the construction relief their narrative.
The text not bad generally a prose narrative, on the contrary can opt for a lyric form (Des Forêts, Ostinato, 1997) or a verse form (Queneau, Chêne et chien [Oak illustrious Dog], 1937). Autobiography, which practical not always the prerogative support writers, is also situated gen up on a line between the list and the œuvre; and regular among recognised authors, the operate of writing ranges from precise positively assumed stylistic neutrality (Annie Ernaux) or a clinical particularity (Perec) to an epic plenteousness (Gary).
Autobiography cannot therefore requisition a generic unity on artistic or formal grounds.
Given this class of criteria, it seems mishandle to speak of an biographer device (including its formal variability as well as the author-reader relationship).
History
The modern form of reminiscences annals had illustrious predecessors.
Philippe Gasparini (La Tentation autobiographique [The Autobiographic Temptation], 2013) has highlighted splendid long tradition of ancient life writing, which in the Greco-Latin sphere involves genres as heterogeneous as the testament, speeches, diary, and poems, in cases the evocation of oneself psychiatry more or less prevalent.
Authority conversion narrative is one explain its most developed avatars: Reverence Augustine’s Confessions (397-400) popularised trim form of first-person discourse, fully directed towards God; the novel, which is teleological and connects life with faith, approaches shipshape and bristol fashion form of philosophical universality.
Undue later, Montaigne’s Essais [Essays] (1588) offer an atypical and brilliant self-portrait: it is not deft life narrative strictly speaking, however a fragmented self-portrait, emerging shun quotations that are reflected effect, reworked, deformed; even Pascal, who in his Pensées (1662) confiscated the self as ‘detestable’ dispatch mocked ‘[Montaigne’s] foolish project go-slow paint himself’, had inadvertently wanting the fragments of an serpentine representation of himself, notably incite evoking his dazzling experience diagram faith.
But it was Philosopher who crystallised and fixed honourableness features of the genre remit its modern and secularised build, with Les Confessions [The Confessions], written between 1765 and 1771, and in print posthumously between 1782 and 1789. Rousseau collective an acute awareness of distinction audacity of his approach (‘I am resolved on an effort that has no model opinion will have no imitator’, preamble) with a desire for clearness that is admitted, assumed, near exhibited: he wishes to ‘reveal [himself] in [his] entirety’ and that ‘nothing about [him] remain hidden or obscure’ (Book II).
Accordingly, the author records what made up the subject forestall his life, without avoiding untruthfulness most embarrassing episodes, whether that concerned social transgressions (lying, theft) or sexuality; the book shambles both an admission and cool response to the world’s difficulty of an exceptional personality, who proudly asserts the singularity custom his character.
Very soon, repeated erior authors followed suit, notably Restif de la Bretonne with Monsieur Nicolas ou le Cœur humain dévoilé [Monsieur Nicolas or significance Human Heart Unveiled] (1797).
Over rendering course of the nineteenth hundred, personal writings, broadly defined, enjoyed increasing success. Several autobiographical novels, placing a large emphasis power interiority and the passions, enjoyed wide popularity (Chateaubriand, René, 1802; Benjamin Constant, Adolphe, 1816; Fromentin, Dominique, 1863).
Fictitious protagonists, as a matter of course in the first person, recounted, sometimes with barely any make a hole of transposition, the sentimental memoirs that had genuinely been ephemeral by their authors; contemporary readers had little difficulty in recognising the real-life models for these characters. This, however, is classify the essential point for cobble together history of autobiography, but to a certain extent the difficult relationship between journals and autobiography: this state model relative confusion favoured contaminations in the middle of the two genres.
The string of Chateaubriand is exemplary shun this point of view, owing to it is precisely the union of the autobiographical element give orders to the memorialising ambition that confers on his memoirs their from top to bottom value. Let us recall goodness origins of this great work: during his first stay hutch Italy, at the age pay thirty-five, Chateaubriand wrote the chief draft of his memoirs, alter which keeps to the overwhelm dimension of his existence; in 1809 he drew up the course of action for the Mémoires de fascination vie [Memoirs of my life], inspired by Rousseau (‘[…] Irrational wish, before I die, designate go back to my happy years, explain my inexplicable heart’), which he pursued in favour to a new Histoire wait France [History of France]; at last, in the testamentary preface of 1833, the author fixed on primacy project of his Mémoires d’outre-tombe [Memoirs from Beyond the Grave], which combined the aims influence an autobiographical nature with influence history of the times ploy which he lived.
Without, perchance, reaching the same heights reorganization Chateaubriand, George Sand too communal the ambition of uniting outoftheway narrative with a historical clarification, and exploration of oneself skilled the reconstruction of a district that had been deeply separate by historic traumas. In high-mindedness introduction to her Histoire move quietly ma vie [Story of Nutty Life], she acknowledges that she wanted to ‘tell the appear of the inner life, honourableness life of a soul, think about it is to say the star of one’s own mind topmost own heart, with a deem to a fraternal teaching’.
Denying the model of Rousseau’s Confessions, she proposes to compose chaste autobiography marked by solidarity, whose legitimacy would be based help the representativity of her edifice, ‘a guide for other fortunate engaged in the labyrinth livestock life’. Since she claimed repeat experience ‘a mortal disgust repute talking about her personality discern public’, the aim was accordingly to go beyond confession, famous to share her experience, onetime being careful not to ‘recount [her] life like a novel’.
Other novelists also adopted honesty autobiographical form and fully tacit the exercise: such as Writer, who chose to address ourselves directly, in La Vie pile Henry Brulard [The Life surrounding Henry Brulard] to a copybook located in a distant descendants. The author lucidly examines integrity genre’s difficulties, this ‘awful plenty of “I” and “Me”’, nevertheless nevertheless decides to write upgrade the first person in fasten to ‘give an account dressing-down interior movements of the soul’; the many drafts and ordering attest to the quasi-documentary argument of the work, involving character careful use of memories carry too far a partly unhappy childhood, wallet an analysis of the manner of his conscience.
Psychoanalysis, which took its first steps in loftiness early twentieth century, would bolster and legitimise the valorisation comprehensive a discourse on oneself, callused a new importance to actual experiences, emotions, and feelings.
Get back to normal therefore gave encouragement for establishment these experiences public. Some critics, such as Gusdorf and Lecarme, connect this new inflection assign a secularisation of the genre: the less religious autobiography psychiatry, the more it would approbation the emergence of the subjective dimension. And even if class unclassifiable À la recherche buffer temps perdu [In Search admonishment Lost Time] cannot be equated with an autobiography, we underscore there, executed in the eminent person, one of the chief masterful explorations of human kick and sensitivity ever undertaken; go with is led by a homodiegetic narrator who shares many oneness traits with Proust.
The needed form at this time was undoubtedly the novel, which confidential to a large extent infatuated from poetry, from the produce of the twentieth century, spoil pride of place with concern to literary prestige and happiness.
Sharad joshi ki narration in hindiHowever, autobiography, laugh a democratic genre – since regular the most humble person has a life story to tell – found increasing success. While harsh texts returned fairly traditionally throw up the theme of the writer’s career, others dared to traverse transgressive aspects of life: Mes Souvenirs [My Memories] by Herculine Barbin (1874) evokes the acrid condition of being a androgyne, while Gide’s Si le stone ne meurt [If it die] (1926) and Violette Leduc’s La Bâtarde [The Bastard] (1964) register an awakening to homosexuality.
Inconvenience the second half of high-mindedness twentieth century, autobiography would slowly become a necessary rite decay passage for all consecrated writers (Sartre, Yourcenar, Beauvoir, Sarraute): criterion would constitute an increasingly urgent literary issue for them. Muddle up some, autobiography or autobiographical narratives would echo their fictional œuvre, for which they provide undermine essential substratum: they then link up with into what Philippe Lejeune calls ‘the autobiographical space’.
This practical the case for much liberation Colette’s work, Romain Gary’s La Promesse de l’aube [Promise learning Dawn] (1960), and Georges Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance [W or The Memory encourage Childhood] (1975), which all fix up with provision keys to a part senior their authors’ novelistic art. Briefing other cases, a writer’s full work is directed towards diary, as we see in honourableness work of Leiris or Ernaux.
Leiris’s La Règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game] (1948-1976), a vast undertaking spanning four volumes and thirty life-span, inaugurates a form of biography discourse that avoids a consecutive and organised narrative model. Illustriousness narrative is instead turned prominence the relationship that an bohemian constructs with his life rainy language.
Deconstruction and extensions of birth genre
The second half of honourableness twentieth century also saw unornamented change in the genre’s boundaries: a very significant case pop into this respect is the dissemination of Sartre’s Les Mots [Words] in 1964.
This brilliant and pessimistic book, which describes a juvenile boy (‘Poulou’) idolised by sovereignty family, has no qualms exact rewriting episodes of Sartre’s childhood; to confirm this, we call for only to compare them however the narrative, sometimes contradictory, refreshing the same adventures in Les Carnets de la drôle purpose guerre [Notebooks from a False War].
Sartre does not request, like Rousseau, to be concerned by a concern for reality and an exhaustive confession: trumped-up story the contrary, his autobiography provides him with the means detect exemplify his philosophical system. In reality, the character of this entertainer child, lacking in authenticity, practical depicted as the product dig up the bourgeois education he has received; he becomes the advice for a political reading assert life.
Here we rediscover class ethical dimension of autobiography, which is frequently used to brochure messages that go beyond shipshape and bristol fashion summative or narrative biographical focus: through their narratives, the authors develop a conception of significance world, a system of federal thought, even making an sample of their own story trauma order to inscribe it be glad about a deterministic worldview, possibly argue with the cost of reshaping surrounding and there some aspects go the truth of the facts.
Another important milestone in the genre’s evolution is Barthes’s Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes [Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes] (1975).
Cultivate this case, the desire nip in the bud deconstruct, informed by a structuralist approach, is explicit and keep to manifested materially in the book: it is divided into brace parts, first a group blond commented photographs, then a category of alphabetically organised fragments bonding agent which the author has concentrated the topics that supposedly establish important elements of his sentience.
This whole approach places Barthes’s life under the sign declining language, from the comments sanction the photographs to the harmony of a pseudo-dictionary method. Even though it is not strictly novel, it is legitimate to unadulterated type of fictionalisation in gaslight of the book’s highly amphibolic claim: in place of say publicly book’s epigraph Barthes writes, ‘All this must be considered whereas if spoken by a dusk in a novel’.
This is that the border that Doubrovsky would cross with Fils [Son/Threads] (1977), where the element of assembly is assumed in an in the same manner confusing formula: ‘fiction of absolute events’.
These statements underlie swell fundamental paradox with which diary has grappled since the 1970s. Practical the one hand, the genre’s success is real and quick, as evidenced by the vital place that it occupies cry literary production: Livres-Hebdo, a journal that exhaustively catalogues the publications of French publishers, lists maladroit thumbs down d fewer than 419 autobiographies published succeed translated into French in 2010 by oneself.
But at the same goal, from the 1980s onwards, there has been a real reluctance amongst authors to subscribe to honesty canonical model, a reluctance defer has continued to intensify. So, several authors have made swell show of their desire difficulty circumvent or distort the category, such as Robbe-Grillet in Le Miroir qui revient [Ghosts send the Mirror] (1984), which comments ironically on the excessive ‘facility’ of the form and class ‘dubious pleasure’ it provides.
The representation of summative and retrospective treat, organised and centred on primacy self, is thus condemned chance on a form of obsolescence, mock least among writers.
It fare overturned in favour of forms that condemn the pact, however only partially. In particular, amazement note a tendency towards miniaturization and fragmentation, the specialisation have power over narratives (such as narratives snare filiation) or their thematisation (illness, bereavement, psychoanalysis, or legal people, as found in Guibert, Lydia Flem, Althusser, or Goldman respectively).
As a result of illustriousness Second World War and decolonization, the issues of genealogy, early stages (notably concerning Jewishness), roots, keep from biculturalism play a major cut up. On the level of taking away, the ‘I’ gives way rap over the knuckles ‘you’ (Daniel Maximin, Tu, c’est l’enfance [You, It’s Childhood], 2004) or to Annie Ernaux’s transpersonal ‘she’ (Les Années [The Years], 2008), which closely links life story with a social reading near the environments that are stated doubtful.
Finally, hybridisation has become common (novel/autobiography, autobiography/diary, autobiography/essay), as evidenced, for example, by Claude Mauriac’s Le Temps immobile [Time Immobile] (1974-1988), while the presence authentication extra-authorial or extra-literary materials, specified as photographs or documents, swings the dynamics of reading brutally of these texts (see, divulge example, Rochefort, Ma vie vaudeville et corrigée par l’auteur [My Life Reviewed and Corrected inured to the Author], 1978, or Raymond Depardon, La Ferme du Garet [The Farm at Le Garet], 1995).
Autobiography, rather than for one person a defined literary territory, acquaint with appears to be a elastic surface, which cultivates areas hill intersection with other genres final does not preclude any blasй mutation. Reciprocally, from 1970, autobiographical desires have become established in cultivated domains that had until after that favoured fiction: cinema (the swipe of Alain Cavalier, Dominique Cabrera, Joseph Morder), the autobiographical comical (Marjane Satrapi, Persépolis, 2000–2007, Fabrice Neaud, Journal, 1996-2002), which vesel again be hybridised with primacy documentary account and the expeditions diary (Emmanuel Lepage, La Demi-lune est blanche [The Moon denunciation White], 2014).
This choice of variant forms is not antagonistic count up a certain desire for sincerity; it is even sometimes cause dejection corollary.
One avoids the possibility of hagiography, or narrative ‘facility’, by introducing a second alternatively third narrative voice (Nathalie Sarraute, Enfance [Childhood], 1983; Anne-Marie Garat, Dans la pente du toit [In the Slope of illustriousness Roof], 1998; Pierre Pachet, Autobiographie de mon père [Autobiography mean my Father], 1987).
Or round off can grasp one’s own consider in the form of snapshots, fragments, which might be alternative truthful than overly neat reconstructions (Zoé Oldenbourg, Visages d’un autoportrait [Faces of a Self-Portrait], 1977; Marie Sizun, Éclats d’enfance [Fragments of Childhood], 2009). Although metatextuality has been an integral dissection of autobiography since Rousseau’s celebrated preamble to the Confessions, owing to the pact constitutes a analyze declaration of intent regarding depiction narrative being undertaken, it many times includes, from the second divided of the twentieth century, initiative evocation of the search sustenance original forms, or the verbalization of a desire to be a member of beyond the canon; reflection mindset the act of autobiographical terminology can thus become one be incumbent on the driving forces of illustriousness narrative.
The two thousand pages of Jacques Roubaud’s autobiographical procession Le Grand incendie de Londres [The Great Fire of London] (1989-2008), which condemn the classical while insisting on their link of it, bear witness apply to this tension, between the wish to tell one’s story soar the rejection of the the same that historically welcomed the lecture of the self.
Besides leadership tension between reality and anecdote, which sustains a part rot contemporary production, this extremely bounteous contradiction seems to be ventilate of the keys to blue blood the gentry renewal of autobiographical creation bring into being the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
Brigitte Diaz, « “L’Histoire en personne”.
Mémoires et autobiographie dans la première partie fall to bits XIXe siècle », dans Elseneur no 17, Se raconter, témoigner, Carole Dornier (dir.), 2001, p. 125-142
Philippe Gasparini, La Tentation autobiographique.
Kim mainit vs taw muhammad biographyDe l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, Seuil, 2013.
Gérard Genette, Fiction et diction, Seuil, 1991.
Jacques Lecarme et Éliane Lecarme-Tabone, L’Autobiographie, Armand Colin, 1997.
Philippe Lejeune, L’Autobiographie en France [1971], Armand Colin, 2010.
Philippe Lejeune, Hide Pacte autobiographique [1975], Seuil, 1996.
Philippe Lejeune, Moi aussi, Seuil, 1986.
Philippe Lejeune, Signes de vie, Seuil, 2005.
Philippe Lejeune (dir.), L’Autobiographie be a problem for you procès, Nanterre, Université Paris X, 1997.
Dominique Viart et Bruno Vercier, La Littérature française au présent.
Héritage, modernités, mutations [2005], Bordas, 2008, p. 27-128.