xii, 261 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Jorge Semprun, survivor of Buchenwald, intends to "make testimony a space of creation". The formal inventiveness of the novel allows him to express the truth of his experience by creating a reflexive textual space in which the author is presented in the act of writing, and the reader is called to realize his/her active part in the constitution of narrative meanings. Author and reader thus collaborate on establishing the ethical relationship of testimony. My dissertation examines the formal characteristics of Semprun's novelistic representation of history to describe its relationship to political discourse in particular and to highlight the aesthetic autonomy of the novel, which defines the specificity of literature's approach to history. Semprun develops this aesthetic through multiple narrative innovations and a conception of narration as performance, where Saying is distinct from the Said (Levinas). This performative dimension of the narration is described in this work through a phenomenological notion of reading centered on the interpretative and imaginary activities brought into play by the reading subject. The contrast between narrative aesthetics and ideological discourse defines both Semprun's writing strategies and the function attributed to the reader in these texts. Becoming aware of the author's motivations and rhetorical processes, which explicitly multiply interpretative trajectories within the text, the reader realizes that the stakes of testimony reside in the act of reading, a reading that is engaged, participative, and perpetually renewed. By special agreement, this dissertation was co-directed by Professor Massimo Lollini of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon and Professor Jean-Pierre Martin of Faculté des Lettres, Sciences du Langage et Arts of the Université Lumière-Lyon 2 (France), in partial fulfillment of doctoral degrees from both universities. This dissertation is written in French. / Committee in charge: Massimo Lollini, Chairperson, Romance Languages; Gina Herrmann, Member, Romance Languages; Francoise Calin, Member, Romance Languages; George Sheridan, Outside Member, History