French Literature Reviews - 2026

Being and Self-Knowledge in the 19th Century: Literature and the Human Sciences
Other Literary Studies

Being and Self-Knowledge in the 19th Century: Literature and the Human Sciences
Edited by John E. Jackson, Juan Rigoli, and Daniel Sangsue
Preface by Alain Corbin

Métropolis
ISBN: 2-88340-170-5
256 pages
€22.50

Publisher's Overview:

This volume explores the "appetite for self-analysis in the 19th century," to use Alain Corbin's phrase from his preface. Life writing—confessions, diaries, memoirs—became a territory for individual exploration, gradually shedding the influence of the Church and preceding the advent of psychoanalytic discourse.
While Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet turn to physiology in their pursuit of universal knowledge (J. Rigoli), numerous spiritualists assign great importance to dreams in their journals or "nocturnals" (J. Carroy). Although memoirs allowing for a discourse on both the world and the self flourished at the beginning of the 19th century (D. Zanone), Stendhal, while indulging in a "hedonistic resurrection of the past," ultimately confronts the impossibility of truly knowing oneself (D. Sangsue). Vigny, meanwhile, explicitly forbids himself from exploring the self in his journal (M. Goergen), whereas Amiel's quest for continuity of being culminates in his existing solely through his diary (E. Ender).
Although Freud drew profound inspiration from literature for his discoveries (J. Jackson), it was psychoanalysis that ultimately brought this mode of self-exploration to a close, offering instead, as Alain Corbin writes, "alternative procedures for confession and the exploration of the inner self." This is why the men and women of the 19th century have become strangers to anyone who fails to study the vanished logics through which self-knowledge was once pursued.

The 19th century witnessed a significant shift in how individuals documented their inner lives, transitioning away from religious frameworks toward secular modes of introspection. This period saw the rise of various forms of life writing, including diaries and memoirs, which served as spaces for navigating the relationship between the individual and the world. The volume Being and Self-Knowledge in the 19th Century: Literature and the Human Sciences explores this appetite for self-analysis, noting how life writing gradually shed the influence of the Church before the advent of psychoanalytic discourse.

The essays in this volume examine how writers and thinkers attempted to define the self through lenses ranging from physiology and spiritualism to the subjective experience of memory. By discussing figures such as Flaubert, Stendhal, Vigny, and Amiel, the contributors illustrate the tensions inherent in the project of self-knowledge. Readers interested in the history of subjectivity and the intersection of literature with early human sciences may find this collection relevant. The volume notes that psychoanalysis eventually offered alternative procedures for the exploration of the inner self, marking a transition from these earlier modes of inquiry.