La voix des masques. Réflexions sur la constitution du genre de l'autobiographie

Abstract

Gérard Lahouati : The voice of masks. Reflections on the beginnings of autobiography. In order to understand the questions facing the reader of autobiographies in the 18th Century, this article studies the appearance of the genre and the debates occasioned by this redefinition of a literary field. We adopt several approaches, at the crossroads of literary theory, history and psychoanalysis, and ask how far the development of studies on autobiography in the 18th Century is the result of a transformation of the conception of literature. This leads to the question of the relationship between 'reality3 and fiction, of enunciation, the status of the first-person narrator, of writing about temporality and memory. We also reflect on the ways of reading first-person works. The analysis links the appearance of new forms of individual consciousness in the 18th Century to references to experience and to strategies for revealing one's intimity.