Abstract
Is Semprun’s L’Écriture ou la vie his first purely autobiographical work? Or does the artifice that the first-person narrator repeatedly claims is necessary to relate his experience of a Nazi concentration camp signal that he has altered not only the form of the narrative but also the content? This article examines closely two episodes in which the narrator uses a well-known narrative technique in an original way that allows the narrator to convey the full density of the experiences, with all their uncertainty and oscillations. The striking “artifice” of these episodes is potentially in tension with the numerous textual signs pointing clearly to the work’s status as autobiography.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Ann Banfield (1982) Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction Routledge and Kegan Paul Boston
Wayne C. Booth (1983) The Rhetoric of Fiction The University of Chicago Press Chicago
David Carroll (1999) ArticleTitle“The Limits of Representation and the Right to Fiction: Shame, Literature, and the Memory of the Shoah.” Esprit Créateur 39 IssueID4 68–79
Dorrit Cohn (1999) The Distinction of Fiction The John Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London
Gérard Genette (1980) Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method Cornell University Press Ithaca
Lejeune, Philippe. On Autobiography. V. 52 of Theory and History of Literature. Ed. Paul John Eakin. Tr. Katherine Leary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. (Translation of Le Pacte autobiographique, published in 1975).
Philippe Lejeune (1986) Moi Aussi Editions du Seuil Paris
Uri Margolin (1999) “Of What is Past, Is Passing or to Come: Temporality, Aspectuality, Modality, and the Nature of Literary Narrative” David Herman (Eds) Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis Ohio State University Press Columbus 142–166
Greta Olson (2003) ArticleTitle“Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators.” Narrative 11 IssueID1 93–109
Jorge Semprun (1967) L’Evanouissement Editions Gallimard Paris
Jorge Semprun (1980) Quel beau dimanche! Editions Grasset et Fasquelle Paris
Jorge Semprun (1994) L’Écriture ou la vie Editions Gallimard Paris
Jorge Semprun (2001) Le Mort qu’il faut Editions Gallimard Paris
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Anderson, C. Artifice and Autobiographical Pact In Semprun’s L’écriture ou la vie . Neophilologus 90, 555–573 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-005-4231-4
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-005-4231-4