Azougagh

This book is part of a literary and critical reflection on the challenges of women’s self-writing, with a particular focus on Simone de Beauvoir and Nathalie Sarraute. Combining literary history, feminist criticism and a thematic approach, it examines the ways in which women have invested the autobiographical genre with a view to making it a place of memory, identity affirmation and legitimization of their voice in the literary arena.The work traces the historical development of the genre and looks at the motivations for writing about oneself, often rooted in childhood, family ties and educational experiences, as they appear in Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée and Enfance. It also addresses the tension between truth and self-construction in autobiographical writing, before proposing a cross-reading of these two major figures of the XXᵉ century.