Abstract
Focusing on Annie Ernaux’s Mémoire de fille, and drawing insight from both a recent interview with the author and from historian Arlette Farge’s work on the use of archives, this paper considers briefly how Ernaux uses her archived letters to give voice to her “former self” and to a generation of girls whose public behavior was inevitably subject to evaluation and judgment.
Notes
1 Ernaux, Annie. L’Autre fille. Paris, NiL, 2011.
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Notes on contributors
Karin Schwerdtner
Karin Schwerdtner is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) where she teaches in the program in French Studies. Her research focuses on contemporary literature, but she is also interested in epistolary literature and the literary interview. Her work with Margot Irvine and Geneviève de Viveiros, Risques et regrets. Les Dangers de l’écriture épistolaire came out in 2015 and her book of literary interviews, Le (Beau) risque d’écrire in January 2018 (Éditions Nota bene).