Contemporary French women writers: first person writing and literary paratopy

Abstract

Feminist criticism, which has enriched with its qualifications and revisions the contributions made in recent times by the different schools and currents of analysis of literature, has traditionally shown (and shows) a particularly interest in women’s speaking and writing. Based on this premise, my contribution aims to highlight some aspects of the literary production of contemporary French authors who write in the second half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century like Annie Ernaux, Christine Angot, Camille Laurens, Lydie Salvayre, Laurence Tardieu or Maire Darrieusseq. All of them are joined by the pre-eminence they give to writing in the first person in their stories, the central consideration of the body of women and the strategic ambiguity that blurs the limits that separate - or unite - life experience and literary creation.

 To carry out this analysis, I will start from the reflection on the concepts of "writing of oneself / writing of the world", "truth / fiction", "autobiography / autofiction", from a feminist perspective, in order to show the specificities that constitute the common denominator of all of them. In their literary production they develop a paratopic reflection on their "being" a woman, as well as on the meaning of writing and the diffuse borders that separate truth and fiction. Their literary stance is embodied in particular thematic, structural and discursive strategies that inscribe them in the literary field, position them in the intellectual context and show them socially as authors of a literature in tension.