"The American Tradition of the Literary Interview 1840 - 1956: A Cultural History" is the first study to document the development of the literary interview in the United States. A handful of critics have discussed the literary interview and traced it back to various European cultural traditions; however, I argue that, like the interview, which the British journalist William Stead wrote "was a distinctly American invention," the literary interview was a particularly American form. Drawing on archival research and new readings of primary sources, this project examines the literary interview's systemic growth and formal characteristics between 1842 and 1956. I trace connections among the American press, culture, and literary marketplace to offer an as-yet unwritten history of the literary interview. During Charles Dickens's 1842 North American tour, the first literary interviews were published in written-up, or paragraph form and resembled written snapshots or sketches. As a result of the cult of domesticity and the popular scandals of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the literary interview developed into a slightly longer and more narrative form that focused on an author's surroundings and living quarters. With the rise of yellow journalism and muckraking reporting during the first decades of the twentieth century, the literary interview became a more investigative and intrusive form; yet at the same time, the first in-depth, literary conversations with American authors were published. During the interwar period, the second wave of "girl reporters" and lady interviews transformed the written-up literary interview into a more nuanced form that exhibited rhetorical and literary flourishes. With the development of the New Yorker profile and the Paris Review interview in the mid-twentieth century, the literary interview branched off into two distinct modes: the profile and the author Q & A. This history of the literary interview offers a model of reading mass media communications in terms of both content and form. In doing so, this project chges the critical frameworks that dismiss the literary interview as ancillary to literature and articulate the importance of interviews, communication, and conversation in American culture.

Cette thèse présente une réflexion sur les multiples figures du romancier américain qui émergent des entretiens littéraires de The Paris Review entre 1953 et 1973, soit les deux premières décennies d'existence de la revue. Afin de mieux saisir les spécificités et l'impact du modèle d'entretien littéraire créé par une poignée de rédacteurs aussi inspirés que débutants, cette étude revient tout d'abord sur l'histoire des little magazines, sur le contexte de la création et le fonctionnement interne de The Paris Review, avant de retracer l'histoire complexe de l'entretien littéraire. Grâce à l'analyse des archives de la revue, elle met en évidence la collaboration de l'équipe de rédacteurs et des romanciers interviewés dans un processus novateur de réécriture des entretiens. Car l'entretien littéraire est un lieu de négociation de différentes autorités, entre l'« ethos préalable » de l'écrivain utilisé par l'interviewer et les diverses stratégies (scénographies auctoriales, postures, « prêt à être écrivain ») déployées par le romancier pour asseoir sa légitimité. Derrière le portrait à deux voix que semble être l'entretien littéraire apparaît bientôt l'autoportrait de l'écrivain. L'entretien littéraire de The Paris Review donne lieu à une forme de fiction biographique, à travers laquelle l'écrivain que The Paris Review était venu interroger sur « l'art de la fiction » laisse la parole à l'auteur pour construire et défendre son image. / This dissertation examines the various figures of the American novelist which takes form in the famous literary interviews published by The Paris Review during the first two decades of its existence (1953-1973). In order to analyze the specificities and the impact of the new model of literary interview created by the inspired, yet inexperienced editors and interviewers of the review, this dissertation first traces the history of "little magazines" as well as the context in which the Paris Review interviews were shaped and polished, and then analyzes the complex history of the literary interview as a genre. Through the study of the archives of the review, the author casts a light on the collaboration between the editorial board and the interviewed novelists during the demanding rewriting process of the literary interviews. The literary interview thus appears as a space where negotiations take place, opposing the preconceptions of the interviewer to the various strategies displayed by the novelist in order to assert his legitimacy. What was originally designed as a single portrait composed by two instances actually turns into the novelist's controlled self-portrait.Ultimately The Paris Review literary interview becomes a form of biographical fiction, in which the writer, initally questioned on "the art of fiction", leaves center stage to the author, who takes great care of his own public persona.