French 84: Genres of Self: French Autobiographical Writing

How does the notion of self and of one’s self change through time, both historically and in an individual lifetime? How do literary traditions of writing the self reflect and influence these changes? This course surveys the tradition of autobiographical writing in French from the 16th century to the present and looks at the different generic forms that self-writing may take, including literary self-portraiture, intimate writing, autobiography, autobiographical fiction, autofiction, and autotheory. In addition to analyzing the particularities of these different genres of self-writing and the different selves they construct, we will also consider the potential of self-writing for exploring questions of memory and identity, the experience of time and history, and the relationship between the individual and the collective. Readings may include works by Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Patrick Modiano, and Marie NDiaye.