Present Pasts: Patrick Modiano's (auto)biographical Fictions

Dervila Cooke

Rodopi, 2005 - Literary Criticism - 356 pages

This is the first in-depth study of the twelve Modiano texts specifically concerned with life-writing in autobiographical and biographical-cum-historiographical projects. The texts covered range from La Place de l' toile(1968) through to La Petite Bijou (2001). Close textual analysis is combined with a theoretical approach based on current thinking in autobiography, biography, and reader-response. Modiano's use of autofiction and biofiction is analysed in the light of his continuing obsession with both personal trauma and History, as well as his problematic relationship with his paternally-inherited Jewish links. His view of identity (of self and other) is thus discussed in relation to a particular literary and socio-historical context- French, postmodern, post-World War II, and post-Holocaust.

Contents

• Introduction: 11
• Four Types of Modiano Reader: 25
• The Modiano Narrator a Brief Introduction: 42
• Shadows of the Mind: 57
• The Origin of the Term and the Debate around It: 77
• The Autofictions: 91
• Livret de famille and the MultipleText Reader: 108
• de naufrage: 111
• Fragments of Selfhood: 126
• Mystery Imagination and the Development of a Writer: 140
• SelfNarration as Theme: 155
• Imagining Memories: 170
• Hints and Secrets: 184
• ReImagining History: 195
• Biofictions: 210
• Briefness Mystery and Biographèmes: 223
• Recording the Past with an Ethos of Ambiguity: 237
• Commemoration with Minimal Betrayal: 254
• Fusion and Distance Biography in Voyage: 269
• Biographical Truth: 282
• Scene and Character: 295
• Belief and Suspicion: 308
• Index: 345

About the author

Dervila Cooke is an IRCHSS Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. She has lectured in French literature and culture at University College Dublin and at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She received B.A., M.A., and Ph.D degrees from University College Dublin, and completed part of her doctoral studies at the Ecole Normale Superieure, rue d Ulm."

Bibliographic information

• Title: Present Pasts: Patrick Modiano's (auto)biographical Fictions; Brill Book Archive Part 1, ISBN: 9789004472495; Volume 255 of Faux titre : études de langue et littérature françaises; Issue 255 of Faux titre, ISSN 0167-9392
• Author: Dervila Cooke
• Publisher: Rodopi, 2005
• ISBN: 9042018844, 9789042018846
• Length: 356 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / French; Literary Criticism / General; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Popular Culture; Social Science / Sociology / General