La Littérature du "je" / Autobiography as Literature

This course will consider what sets autobiography apart as a genre. Using a number of famous texts, we will look at many forms the autobiographical "pact" between writer and reader can take. We will attempt to understand the connections between autobiography and truth - or truths - and between autobiography and fiction. Drawing on the literature of psychoanalysis, we will also examine the fantasies at the heart of this writing and in particular in narratives of childhood, both those fantasies the writer designates as such, and those that guide the work unconsciously.

Texts Rousseau, Confessions , livres 1 à 6; Sartre, Les Mots ; Leiris, L'Age d'homme ; Perec, W ou le souvenir d'enfance ; Sarraute Enfance. Critical works, Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique ; Lecarme Autobiographie.