Biographical Fictions 19th–21st Centuries - Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

French Literature Reviews - 2026

Biographical Fictions 19th–21st Centuries
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Collective work
Biographical Fictions 19th–21st Centuries
Texts compiled and introduced by Anne-Marie Monluçon and Agathe Salha.

Presses universitaires du Mirail
Series "Cribles - Essais de littérature"
Toulouse 2007
ISBN: 2-85816-861-X
EAN 13: 9782858168613
€28.00

Publisher's presentation:

The study of "biographical fictions" is a deliberately open field.
The formula can indeed be understood first as an oxymoron, in the sense of imaginary biographies of real figures, in the tradition of Marcel Schwob's Vies imaginaires (1896)—a sense that contemporary literary production renders undeniably relevant. Yet it also evokes the biographical novel, the life story of a fictional character that adopts, often from a parodic perspective, the form and conventions of the biographical genre.
These hybrid, generically indeterminate texts emerge as a privileged space for questioning the links between fiction, truth, and knowledge, as well as the capacity of life writing to establish itself as a literary work. This volume attempts to explore the multiplicity of forms taken by these biographical fictions since the 19th century in French and foreign literature, to trace their boundaries with neighboring genres (biography, autobiography, hagiography, history, but also mythical narrative or essay), and to pinpoint their privileged subjects (illustrious or unknown men, artists or witnesses), while reflecting on the chronology of this genre, its archaeology, and its connections to modernity.

Contents:

THEORY AND HISTORY OF THE FORM

  • Modern birth and contemporary rebirth of biographical fictions
  • "Oneself as Another: Premises and Meanings of the Appeal to Biographical Fiction in Contemporary French Literature"
  • The Return to the Biographical Genre in History: What Historiographical Renewals?
  • BETWEEN HISTORY AND NOVEL
  • "Modern Biographical Fiction and Romantic Historical Novel: Alexandre Dumas's La San Felice." Hagiography at Risk of Fiction: Huysmans
  • The Gospel According to Louis: Biographical Fiction and Theory of History in Louis Aragon's The Holy Week
  • From Austerlitz to the Auschwitz Paradigm, or: Biography Between Fiction and History in W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz
  • The Dramatic Work of Denis Guénoun: Portraits of Great Men and the Author Figure
  • SHORT FORMS IN COLLECTIONS
  • "Seeds Full of a Violent Essence" in Vies imaginaires: Marcel Schwob and the Elizabethans
  • The Body and Illness in Three Collections of Brief, Imaginary Lives: Details, Destiny, or Singularity?
  • Infamous Histories, Synthetic Biographies, Fictions: Lives of Jorge Luis Borges
  • Karel Čapek's Apocryphal Tales: Fragments of an Apologia for Ordinary Life
  • The Dream Narrative as Life Narrative in Antonio Tabucchi
  • The Illustrious and the Minuscule: Pierre Michon, Reader of Plutarch
  • Imposture and Belief in Pierre Michon's Small Lives
  • Sartre and the Understanding of Lived Experience
  • The True, the False, the Figurative: On David Bellos and Georges Perec
  • Auctor in Fabula / opus a Fabula: The Substratum of Biographical Fiction
  • This Labyrinth, a Cross-Section of My Brain: Fiction and Reality in W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn
  • Staging the Biographical Relationship in Paul West's Lord Byron's Doctor
  • Henri Michaux: "A Dog's Life" (Mes propriétés)

The volume edited by Anne-Marie Monluçon and Agathe Salha investigates hybrid and generically indeterminate texts that combine elements of life writing, historical narrative, and imaginative prose. By examining works ranging from the nineteenth century to contemporary literature, the contributions address the theoretical and historical dimensions of writing about real or imaginary lives. The collection covers diverse formal approaches, including brief narrative collections, historical novels, and experimental portraits, while questioning the boundaries separating biography, autobiography, hagiography, and essayistic writing within modern literary production.

Readers interested in the evolution of life writing and the generic intersections between history and fiction may find this collective study a useful resource. The essays examine how authors deploy biographical forms to question the links between truth, knowledge, and literary creation, focusing on subjects that span from illustrious figures to ordinary lives. Through readings of writers such as Marcel Schwob, Alexandre Dumas, J.K. Huysmans, Louis Aragon, W.G. Sebald, and Pierre Michon, the book maps the varied manifestations of a persistently evolving literary mode.