The works of Annie Ernaux (b. 1940, Prix Renaudot 1983) have been a source of ongoing controversy. Their central concern is the autobiographically inspired motif of self-improvement via education. This study is the first to essay a comprehensive appreciation extending from analyses of individual works to a synoptic overview revealing the multi-faceted quality of the oeuvre as a whole. The works themselves display a number of highly remarkable characteristics, notably the unusual degree to which content is mirrored by form. The social criticism implicit in the description of social improvement as a radically stigmatic experience denying the upwardly mobile individual any kind of self-affirming identity is echoed at the textual level by a diatribe against a bourgeois ideal of literature which by virtue of its smoothly coherent surface features is bound to play down the searing conflicts experienced by an individual moving up to higher social status.

Zusammenfassung

With its new subtitle, Romance Literatures of the World, the book series mimesis presents an innovative and integral understanding of the Romance world and Romance Studies from the perspective of literary studies and cultural theory. It takes account of the fact that the fascinating development of Romance literatures and cultures both in Europe and beyond has set in motion worldwide dynamics which continue the great traditions of the Romance world and open up new horizons for them. mimesis works from a transareal understanding of Romance Studies which integrates Romance literatures and cultures both within and outside Europe and which transcends the national and disciplinary boundaries which often conceal the interactions between different traditions and developments in Europe and the Americas, in Africa and Asia. In the archipelago of Romance Studies, mimesis reveals how the representation of reality in the Romance literatures of the world opens the door to a multilingual cosmos of diverse logics.