Au-delà de l'engagement littéraire : l'agentivité chez Annie Ernaux, Vanessa Springora et Virginie Despentes

Details

Supervisors

Piret, Pierre

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres françaises et romanes, orientation générale, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enIf literary engagement still exists in the 21st century, its conception has evolved since Sartre's time. Since the criticisms addressed to Sartre's conception of engaged literature, every author must question his enunciation and the impact of his work within and outside the literary field. In this thesis, we study the engagement of three women writers who have experienced violence related to being women: clandestine abortion, rape and sexual abuse. Through the aesthetic analysis of these authors' narratives, namely L'Événement (Annie Ernaux - 2000), King Kong Théorie (Virginie Despentes - 2006) and Le Consentement (Vanessa Springora - 2020), this dissertation seeks to understand the importance of literary language in the context of autobiographical and engaged narratives. Moreover, the themes addressed by the women writers are taboo and undergo a censorship that literary language seeks to circumvent. In order to carry out our analysis, we use the theoretical concept of agentivity. The latter supposes that every subject is alienated by the oppressive discourses and that, to become agent, actor of its own existence, it is necessary that the subject reappropriates these discourses. This process goes through a particular use of the literary language. Thus, we show in this thesis that the three authors studied go beyond the simple engagement, beyond the activism, and propose texts which, in addition to being engaged, break the veil of silences and taboos surrounding the topics related to the violence made against women.