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37 - Autofiction: Writing Lives

from Part V - Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

Adam Watt
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

Since the 1970s, autofiction has come to occupy a place somewhere between the novel and autobiography, disturbing the boundaries of both these forms. Given the proliferation of concepts of autofiction, this chapter does not offer a formal definition, but rather a summary of the development of its forms, the intellectual and social conditions that accompanied this development, and its effects in redrawing the literary landscape. Two broad generations of autofictional writers can be observed: the earlier generation participated in an ‘impersonal’ form of writing in the 1950–60s, then a ‘return of the subject’ in the 1970s, including Roland Barthes’s exploration of more subjective writing, Serge Doubrovsky’s invention of the term ‘autofiction’ in 1977, and similar experiments from nouveaux romanciers such as Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet. The later generation were less marked by the theoretical concerns of their predecessors, and more immersed in the media. Hervé Guibert’s unclassifiable, hybrid works heralded this new generation, and the genre came to greater prominence still with Christine Angot’s work in the 1990s. The dispute between Marie Darrieussecq and Camille Laurens in 2007 illuminates how autofiction had altered the literary landscape, and Chloe Delaume’s work exemplifies some of the latest directions in autofiction.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Boulé, Jean-Pierre, Hervé Guibert: Voices of the Self (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999)Google Scholar
Burgelin, Claude, Grell, Isabelle and Roche, Roger-Yves (eds.), Autofiction(s): colloque de Cerisy (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colonna, Vincent, Autofiction et autres mythomanies littéraires (Auch: Tristram, 2004)Google Scholar
Darrieussecq, Marie, ‘L’Autofiction, un genre pas sérieux’, Poétique, 107 (1996), 369–80Google Scholar
Delaume, Chloé, La Règle du jeu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010)Google Scholar
Doubrovsky, Serge, Lecarme, Jacques and Lejeune, Philippe (eds.), Autofictions & cie (Nanterre: Université Paris X-Nanterre, 1993)Google Scholar
Gasparini, Philippe, Autofiction: une aventure du langage (Paris: Seuil, 2008)Google Scholar
Gasparini, Philippe, Poétiques du je: du roman autobiographique à l’autofiction (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2016)Google Scholar
Genon, Arnaud, Autofiction: pratiques et théories (Paris: Mon Petit Éditeur, 2013)Google Scholar
Grell, Isabelle, L’Autofiction (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014)Google Scholar
Hugueny-Léger, Élise, ‘Broadcasting the Self: Autofiction, Television and Representation of Authorship in Contemporary French Literature’, Life Writing, 14.1 (2016), 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeannelle, Jean-Louis, and Viollet, Catherine (eds.), Genèse et autofiction (Louvain-la-Neuve: Bruylant Academia, 2007)Google Scholar
Jordan, Shirley, ‘Autofiction in the Feminine’, French Studies, 37.1 (2013), 7684Google Scholar
Simonet-Tenant, Françoise (ed.), Dictionnaire de l’autobiographie: écritures de soi de langue française (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2017)Google Scholar

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