Cette thèse propose d’analyser un phénomène littéraire contemporain et transnational : la biofiction. La recherche associe une étude historique et littéraire de la pratique de la biographie, une analyse théorique dont elle est investie par la fiction, et une réflexion critique et comparative pour les textes spécifiques contemporains.Une taxinomie des nombreuses et différentes formes du biographique littéraire s’accompagne d’une description des poétiques spécifiques de la biofiction et d’une analyse de ses enjeux littéraires comme de ses implications extra-littéraires (historiques, sociologiques, philosophiques et même politiques) afin d’évaluer sa teneur épistémologique en tant que catégorie interprétative du réel.D'un point de vue méthodologique, le travail croise l’étude de l'évolution historique du genre biographique avec celle de la naissance et du développement de formes hybrides dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, en Occident : la combinaison de ces deux recherches (biographie et fiction) vise à retracer une généalogie spécifique pour ce nouveau genre (ou sous-genre) qu’est la biofiction, et ainsi à identifier des textes pionniers, qui anticipent une certaine poétique ou tension esthétique dominante dans la production contemporaine. De plus, cette recherche met en place une analyse comparative de ces textes selon différents critères textuels, à la lumière des instruments, en devenir constant, de la narratologie. En particulier, la thèse se concentre sur le concept de narrateur afin de pouvoir reconnaitre et étudier les différentes typologies de narrateur-biographe présents dans le texte. En interrogeant sa place et ses fonctions dans le texte, il est possible d’identifier les raisons de l’usage du biographique dans les récits contemporains et de vérifier de quelle manière il tente de dire une vérité précise sur un homme particulier.Comme en témoigne le titre de cette thèse, le nœud spécifique qui lie la narration d’une vie et l’énonciation d’une vérité à propos de cette vie représente le cœur de notre chantier de recherche, la clé avec laquelle analyser les œuvres dans leur spécificité et évaluer la façon de concevoir la reconstruction d’une identité et d’une mémoire individuelle et collective, publique et privée. / This thesis aims to analyse a contemporary and transnational literary phenomenon: biofiction. The dissertation combines a historical interest in the practice of biography, with a theoretical and analytical perspective for the way in which biographical accounts were invested by fiction, and a critical and comparative attention for specific contemporary texts. A taxonomy proposal of the many different forms of literary biographies is accompanied by the desire to describe the poetics of contemporary biofiction, its literary challenges and its extra-literary implications (historiographical, sociological, philosophical, political): the aim is to evaluate the epistemological and heuristic consistency of biofiction as an interpretative category of reality.From a methodological point of view, the analyses of the millennial evolution of the biographical is followed by the study of the birth and development of hybrid forms in the second half of the twentieth century, in the West, with the purpose of tracing a specific genealogy of the biofictional genre, taking into account the pioneering texts, those that anticipate a certain poetic or dominant aesthetic tension. Subsequently, the work proposes a comparative analysis of some contemporary texts, above all Italian and French, based on different textual criteria and through the tools of narratology. Firstly, the hybrid character, between document and invention, of biofiction (and therefore the coexistence of referential materials and fictional techniques) is evaluated; at the same time, special attention is given to the narrative voice: by questioning the place that it occupies within the story and analysing its function, it is possible to grasp the reasons for the use of biographical discourse in contemporary récits, and at the same time to verify how these kind of narratives try to say a precise and original truth about a particular man.As underlined by the title of the thesis, the specific connection that links the life narrative and the expression of a truth about that life is the heart of this research, the key to analysing biofictional works in their specificity and its ways of conceiving the reconstruction of a particular identity and of individual and collective, public and private memory. / Questa tesi intende analizzare un fenomeno letterario contemporaneo e transnazionale: la biofiction. Il lavoro combina un interesse storico per la pratica della biografia, uno teorico e analitico per la maniera con cui essa è stata investita dalla fiction, e uno critico e comparativo per i testi specifici contemporanei. Uno sforzo di tassonomia delle molte e diverse forme del biografico letterario si accompagna alla volontà di descrivere le poetiche particolari della biofiction contemporanea, le sue sfide letterarie e le sue implicazioni extra-letterarie (storiografiche, sociologiche, filosofiche, politiche): il fine è di valutare la consistenza epistemologica ed euristica della biofiction in quanto categoria interpretativa del reale.Da un punto di vista metodologico il lavoro incrocia lo studio dell’evoluzione millenaria del genere biografico con quello sulla nascita e lo sviluppo delle forme ibride nella seconda metà del XX secolo, in Occidente, con l’obiettivo di rintracciare una genealogia specifica del genere biofinzionale e di identificarne i testi pionieri, quelli che anticipano una determinata poetica o tensione estetica oggi dominante. In seguito, il lavoro propone un’analisi comparativa di alcuni testi contemporanei, soprattutto italiani e francesi, sulla base di criteri testuali diversi e attraverso gli strumenti della narratologia. In primo luogo, si è valutato il carattere ibrido, tra documento e invenzione, della biofiction (e quindi la coesistenza di materiali referenziali e di tecniche finzionali); allo stesso tempo, particolare rilevanza ha assunto il concetto di narratore: interrogando il posto che occupa nel racconto e analizzando la sua funzione è infatti possibile cogliere le ragioni dell’uso del biografico nei récits contemporanei, e insieme verificare in quale maniera essi cercano di dire una verità precisa e originale su un uomo particolare. Come testimonia il titolo della tesi, il nodo specifico che lega la narrazione di una vita e l’enunciazione di una verità a proposito di quella vita rappresenta il cuore della ricerca, la chiave con la quale analizzare le opere nella loro specificità e valutarne il modo di concepire la ricostruzione di un’identità particolare e di una memoria individuale e collettiva, pubblica e privata.

Roman mémoriel, roman familial, roman d’apprentissage, autofiction… Voilà quelques concepts génériques qui m'ont guidé lors de l'élaboration de ce projet en recherche et création. Le point de départ a consisté en une quête identitaire, qui s’est résorbée en une recherche des origines, symbolisée par la figure de mon grand-père inconnu que j’ai tenté de démystifier. Car on m’a toujours dit qu’il avait écrit un roman, intitulé Orage sur mon corps, ce qui a provoqué chez moi diverses impressions et déformations imaginaires. Je croyais par exemple que mon grand-père, Émile, avait partagé les idées et l'état d'esprit qui circulaient durant les années 1940, alors que le Canada français connaissait une première vague de modernisation culturelle. Ces informations, malheureusement, ne se sont pas avérées tout à fait exactes. Et comme cette quête plus personnelle s'est achevée, non sans une certaine insatisfaction, mes recherches se sont poursuivies dans un essai portant essentiellement sur l'œuvre d'André Béland, auteur qui correspond, plus ou moins, à la figure mythique de mon grand-père. Cet essai ne vise pas à juger ni à réhabiliter l’auteur, mais simplement à jeter un peu de lumière sur son œuvre méconnue, parce que la « réappropriation identitaire se centre toujours aussi sur la transmission » (Régine Robin). / Memorial romance, family romance, bildungsroman, autofiction… These are the concepts that inspired me in this creative research project. The starting point was a quest for identity, linked to a quest of the origins, symbolized by my unknown grandfather, a figure that I tried to demystify. Younger, I heard he had written a novel, Orage sur mon corps, which stirred in me various impressions and thwarted imaginations. I thought for example that my grandfather, Emile, had shared the ideas and mindset that circulated during the 1940s, while French Canada lived its first wave of cultural modernization. This version of the story, unfortunately, was not quite accurate. As a result of my dissatisfaction, my research progressed through an essay focusing on the work of André Béland, an author who corresponds better to the mythical figure of my grandfather. This essay is not intended to judge or to lionize the character, but to shed some light on his neglected work.

Roman mémoriel, roman familial, roman d’apprentissage, autofiction… Voilà quelques concepts génériques qui m'ont guidé lors de l'élaboration de ce projet en recherche et création. Le point de départ a consisté en une quête identitaire, qui s’est résorbée en une recherche des origines, symbolisée par la figure de mon grand-père inconnu que j’ai tenté de démystifier. Car on m’a toujours dit qu’il avait écrit un roman, intitulé Orage sur mon corps, ce qui a provoqué chez moi diverses impressions et déformations imaginaires. Je croyais par exemple que mon grand-père, Émile, avait partagé les idées et l'état d'esprit qui circulaient durant les années 1940, alors que le Canada français connaissait une première vague de modernisation culturelle. Ces informations, malheureusement, ne se sont pas avérées tout à fait exactes. Et comme cette quête plus personnelle s'est achevée, non sans une certaine insatisfaction, mes recherches se sont poursuivies dans un essai portant essentiellement sur l'œuvre d'André Béland, auteur qui correspond, plus ou moins, à la figure mythique de mon grand-père. Cet essai ne vise pas à juger ni à réhabiliter l’auteur, mais simplement à jeter un peu de lumière sur son œuvre méconnue, parce que la « réappropriation identitaire se centre toujours aussi sur la transmission » (Régine Robin). / Memorial romance, family romance, bildungsroman, autofiction… These are the concepts that inspired me in this creative research project. The starting point was a quest for identity, linked to a quest of the origins, symbolized by my unknown grandfather, a figure that I tried to demystify. Younger, I heard he had written a novel, Orage sur mon corps, which stirred in me various impressions and thwarted imaginations. I thought for example that my grandfather, Emile, had shared the ideas and mindset that circulated during the 1940s, while French Canada lived its first wave of cultural modernization. This version of the story, unfortunately, was not quite accurate. As a result of my dissatisfaction, my research progressed through an essay focusing on the work of André Béland, an author who corresponds better to the mythical figure of my grandfather. This essay is not intended to judge or to lionize the character, but to shed some light on his neglected work.

“Identity” constitutes one of the most debates theoretical concepts in the domain of postcolonial studies. Scholars often have a historical perspective for examining the question of identity in contemporary literary works. In fact, in the last three decades of the 20th century, we notice a significant increase in the number of literary works of an autobiographical and biographical nature. In the contemporary literature, the predominance of “personal narratives” in which reflect on identity, could be attributed to the heightened sense of individuality, which in turn results from the failure of Grand Ideologies, the mass migrations triggered by the processes of decolonization, the alienation of the consumerist society, and the fundamental redefinition of gender roles in the latter half of the 20th century. But during this period, there is also a parallel epistemological shift that takes place, and which is sometimes downplayed in the historical approach of the postcolonial studies. The episode in the history of ideas, known as “the death of the Subject,” is commonly associated with the structuralist movement in the 1950s and 60s. Structuralists argued that the human mind is traversed by omnipresent structures that play a much more significant role in the creative process than the conscious mind. In the case of language for example, it is not we who make use of the language, but rather, it is the language that evolves and produces itself through our mental structures. With language, human agency is also questioned in literary creation. As a result, literary critics take issue with such notions as “self,” and “self-writing,”-or autobiography. In France, the New Novel was the locus for the literary representation of structuralist theories, and played an important role in the formalist movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Using various techniques, the New Novelists sought to annihilate the anthropocentric narration or otherwise underscore the passive experience of reality by the Subject. The result was a highly formalist type of novels, predominant in the 50s and 60s, drawing mostly an elite intellectual readership. But May 1968 events marked a departure from the structuralist ideology in general, and the literary esthetics of the New Novel in particular. This political, social, and cultural upheaval in France was a ramification of the global student movement against institutional apparatuses and different forms of political establishment. In France, it was also a reaction to the elitist academism that denied the “human,” and to a literary expression that negated individuals and their personal stories. May 1968 protests objected to the monopoly of elite institutions on discourse and knowledge, and that they aspired to a “democratization” of discourse. The increase in the number of autobiographical and biographical works after 1970s, could therefore be viewed as a dialectical response to the formalism of the New Novel. This epistemological shift opened up the discursive space for narratives of “self” and “identity.” These narratives document a highly subjective experience of reality in a rapidly-changing world. Most importantly, they reflect the preoccupations of the contemporary individual as well as the transformations of the social life, and as such, narratives of family, exile, sexuality, and quotidian abound. The personalization of the experience goes so far as to call into question the very meaning of reality and History, and thus the “referential” genres autobiography and biography are new writing practices “autofiction” and “biofiction” which maintain an ambiguous rapport with the referential reality.

Vers le début des années 80, on assiste, sur la scène littéraire française, à un renouveau romanesque que le Nouveau Roman, trop centré sur les jeux de langage, semblait avoir démodé. On assiste également à une résurgence du roman réaliste, social, musical, policier et d’aventures. C’est précisément cette problématique du retour, notamment celui du roman d’aventures, que cette thèse tente d’exposer et surtout d’interroger à travers l’étude de l'oeuvre très représentative d’Echenoz. En renouant avec le genre classique, notre auteur n’hésite pas à en modifier la configuration et les enjeux. La mise au jour de ceux-ci nous permet d’élaborer une poétique du récit d’aventures postmoderne. Telle est la finalité de cette étude : revisiter les lieux d’un genre traditionnel ressuscité pour en dégager les formes et les enjeux contemporains. Mais à cet objectif, s’en ajoute un autre de plus large envergure : parcourir via l’étude du genre, les tribulations de la fiction échenozienne qui n’hésite pas à bifurquer d’un genre à l’autre, à chavirer entre deux espace-temps et à se thématiser dans une écriture elle-même périlleuse, toujours prête à malmener son lecteur totalement démuni face à l’audace débridée de son auteur et aux déroutantes perturbations de la narration et de l’œuvre. / Since 1980, the literary scene in France has witnessed a revival of romance once made obsolete by the New Novel (Nouveau Roman). Realistic, social, musical, crime, spy and adventure fiction has thus sprung up again. The current study examines and questions the problematic of “return” especially the return of adventure fiction in the very representative work of Jean Echenoz. Thought reviving a classical genre, the author does not shy away from modifying and remodeling that genre’s configurations and issues. Thus, this survey elaborates a poetic of the postmodern fiction of adventures, revisiting a traditional genre to extract contemporary forms and issues, so to speak. But from a broader perspective, the study underscores the tribulations of Echenoz’s fiction, work which does not mind to collapse plots, oscillate from one genre to another or sway between two space-times, at the risk of presenting itself in a turbulent mode of writing confounding the reader - who fells helpless in the face of the unbridled audacity of the author and his narrative perturbations.

Cette recherche s’articule autour de la notion de « biofiction » dont l’importance est expliquée à partir des notions de « biographie », « hagiographie », « autobiographie », mais aussi de « récit mythique », d’« autofiction » et de « vulgarisation ». La biofiction, une fiction biographique, permet d'aborder des phénomènes littéraires contemporains dans lesquels l'exemplarité de certaines figures est centrale. Le corpus littéraire à l’étude se compose de bio\hagio fictions postmodernes sur la visionnaire du XIIe siècle Hildegarde de Bingen et le peintre baroque de la fin du XVIe et début du XVIIe siècle Le Caravage (Nobécourt, 2013; Tancredi, 2012; Fernandez, 2002; Haenel, 2019). Comment (et pourquoi) des auteurs abordent-il aujourd'hui selon une perspective transculturelle et transhistorique de telles figures? À partir de quatre romans qui (ré)adaptent la vie de ces deux figures, je montrerai de quelle façon l’exemplarité et la singularité de leur existence est cristallisée par le roman et peut franchir les carcans du « biographique » en leur permettant de passer de personnage de fiction à lieu de mémoire (Nora, 1993). Pour ce faire, il sera question de sonder les spécificités de l’écriture biographique et hagiographique et le cas du personnage de roman tel que considéré dans les théories de la narratologie (Dosse, 2011) : qu’est-ce qui forme le fictif, de quelle manière se met-t-il en opposition (et en adhésion) avec le biographique? L'analyse du corpus se concentrera aussi sur des éléments narratologiques qui sont souvent mis de l'avant dans la recherche-création en biofiction : des expérimentations narratives où s’enchaînent et s’alternent les narrations extra, intra, hétéro et méta diégétique, ainsi que les focalisations interne, externe et zéro. Il sera question de démontrer de quelle manière les jeux narratifs servent le récit biofictif et quelles stratégies et méthodologies les auteurs utilisent pour conférer à leurs romans crédibilité, singularité et légitimité biographique. Ce mémoire a pour but de disséquer, sous plusieurs angles, (littéraire, sociologique, narratologique, médiatique, culturel, historique) la biofiction comme forme (Viart, 2001) dans toute son hybridité, telle qu'elle a été pratiquée (dans les pays occidentaux) au cours des dernières années (2000 à 2020). / This research revolves around the notion of "biofiction", the importance of which is explained from the notions of "biography", "hagiography", "autobiography", but also "mythical narrative", "autofiction" and "popularization". Biofiction, a biographical fiction, makes it possible to approach contemporary literary phenomena in which the exemplarity of certain figures is central. The literary corpus under study consists of postmodern bio\hagio fictions about the 12th century visionary Hildegard of Bingen and the late 16th - early 17th century Baroque painter Caravaggio (Nobécourt, 2013; Tancredi, 2012; Fernandez, 2002; Haenel, 2019). How (and why) do authors today approach such figures from a transcultural and transhistorical perspective? Based on four novels that (re)adapt the lives of these two figures, I will show how the exemplarity and singularity of their existence is crystallized by the novel and can cross the shackles of the "biographical" by allowing them to pass from fictional character to place of memory (Nora, 1993). To do this, we will probe the specificities of biographical and hagiographical writing and the case of the novel character as considered in the theories of narratology (Dosse, 2011): what forms the fictional, in what way does it stand in opposition (and in adhesion) with the biographical? The analysis of the corpus will also focus on narratological elements that are often put forward in biofiction research-creation: narrative experiments where extra, intra, hetero and meta diegetic narratives, as well as internal, external and zero focus, are linked and alternated. It will demonstrate how narrative games serve the biofiction narrative, and what strategies and methodologies the authors use to give their novels credibility, singularity, and biographical legitimacy. This dissertation aims to dissect, from several angles (literary, sociological, narratological, media, cultural, historical) biofiction as a form (Viart, 2001) in all its hybridity, as it has been practiced (in Western countries) in recent years (2000 to 2020).