Shurinova Natalya Sergeevna – Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor at the Department Russian and Foreign Literature, Institute of Philology, Journalism and Intercultural Communication, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
The article examines the poetics of visuality in autobiographical novels W ou le souvenir d’enfance by G. Perec and L’Amant by M. Duras. Comparative analysis enables us to show the potential of visual elements (descriptions of photographs, film images and graphic symbols, demonstrations of imagination images through literary text) in constructing a story about personal experience in autofiction. Photographic ekphrasis is important in both novels. Perec and Duras show that photographs cannot be reliable evidence of the past: writers emphasize the impossibility of going beyond the frame and reconstructing the past, missing photographs can only be imitated by imagination. Visual pictures and images in both novels are also a tool for recovering from childhood trauma and creating a phantasmatic identity. At the same time, for Duras, the fragility of her visual portrait demonstrates the acceptance of the fatality of not understanding her “Self”; and for Perec, the visual image is the starting point for creating phantasms with the help of which he overcomes the pain of loss and affirms the “Self” created by the trauma.
autofiction; photographic ekphrasis; trauma; visualization; Duras; Perec.
Download textFor citing: Shurinova N.S. Poetics of visuality in autobiographical novels W ou le souvenir d’enfance by G. Perec and L’Amant by M. Duras. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 3(59). Р. 98-111. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2024.03.07