Michel Leiris, L'Age d'homme and Major Autobiographical Works [The Age of Man]

Thomas Wilks (Queen Mary, University of London)

Ed. by Hugo Azerad, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1935 - 1990

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)

Resources

Throughout his autobiographical oeuvre, Leiris wishes to see his whole life from the vantage point of his present writing and holds poetic expectations of a prosaic medium. He states mid-way through six decades of autobiographical production that “my intention is not that of a memorialist, since rather than reconstitute my life through following it step by step, I wish to dominate it by embracing it in a single glance (a glance situated in time yet already beyond its time)” [Fibrilles, p. 223]. The form his work takes evolves with its contents: he revealed in an interview in 1973 that he did not establish the structure of his writing in advance [Rambures, 1976, p. 19]; it comes to be as much about defining its own identity as …

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5747 words

Citation: Wilks, Thomas. "L'Age d'homme and Major Autobiographical Works". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 May 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34655, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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