Original Research

Marguerite Yourcenar’s Le Labyrinthe du Monde: autobiography of an absent self?

E. Snyman
Literator | Vol 21, No 1 | a438 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v21i1.438 | © 2000 E. Snyman | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 26 April 2000 | Published: 26 April 2000

About the author(s)

E. Snyman, Department of French, Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, South Africa

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Abstract

Marguerite Yourcenar’s autobiography Le Labyrinthe du monde surprised readers by its lack of self-representation and by being mainly a lengthy exploration of the genealogy of her ancestors. This article pursues the hypothesis that although Yourcenar is considered an autonomous creator, uninfluenced by the Parisian avant-garde of the sixties and seventies, certain aspects of her practice of self-representation draw on a new approach to historiography of which Michel Foucault, for example, was one of the earliest practitioners.

Keywords

Autobiography; Foucault; Historiography; Self-Representation; Yourcenar

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