Le genre biographique et son actualité

Abstract

THE BIOGRAPHICAL GENRE AND ITS TOPICALITY The biographical genre held a special place in the sphere of literature: the unsettled boundaries between living the experience and recording it, its passage into fictional matter were arguments that forced the literary canon to include it in the established system of literary genres. The article below aims to present the biographical genre, in the analysis of the critic Eugen Simion, by means of two elements, which, in my opinion, paradigmatically structure this genre and are actually characteristic of any analysis that accompanies it: 1. The first element regards the formal, compositional specificity (classifications, subdivisions, rules of operation and specific clauses comprised in it). 2. The second element has to do with the content; it refers to the theme (here, intimacy, the horizon of interiority, the metamorphoses of the self are a priority).

Keywords

• memoir
• biographical
• literary genre
• popular culture
• confession