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Présentation. L’atelier d’Annie Ernaux. Contributions à la recherche-création

Pierre-Louis Fort, Élise Hugueny-Léger and AMarie Petitjean

Annie Ernaux, de l’écrivaine chercheuse à l’oeuvre génératrice d’écriture

Violaine Houdart-Merot
A research-driven posture is present in Annie Ernaux’s work at every stage of the writing process. But what exactly does this permanent “research” consist of, and how does it contribute to making her work generative of writing in others? This article explores L’atelier noir (2011), insofar as this “writing journal” bears witness to what precedes or accompanies the act of writing; it then turns to “impossible” works, particularly Mémoire de fille (2016), narratives in which the metatextual dimension and the intertwining of the writer and the researcher become especially significant, precisely because of that impossibility. Finally, the article examines how this researcher’s posture—grounded in a fundamental relation to alterity—makes Ernaux’s writing a source of creative impetus for others: a body of work in which one might discern something akin to a poetic art, not prescriptive, but invitational.

Annie Ernaux dans l’appareil critique de la recherche-création

AMarie Petitjean
This article examines the possibility of a generative reading of Annie Ernaux’s work, with a view toward establishing a critical framework for literary research-creation that determines specific modes of inquiry within the selected texts. Beginning with the question of literary territories and what lies outside the text, the analysis focuses on the distinctive features of a poïétique ernausienne as they manifest in writing. These notations are approached pragmatically, in terms of their potential transfer to research-creation practices: as exigencies that demand strenuous engagement with the text, a writing anchored in the reading experience, and maturation of the project through the cultivation of a sustained critical awareness. The initial lures of self-narration, stylistic imitation, or the reuse of factographic devices are examined in terms of their stakes and their capacity to construct an authorial ethos. The study concludes by identifying the ethical and political consciousness at work—in the most literal sense—in Ernaux’s writing as its principal generative quality.

Comment placer sa voix ? La quête du pronom-à-trouver dans L’atelier noir

Bérengère Moricheau-Airaud
Attending to the stages in the creative process of Annie Ernaux’s writing requires particular attention to the ways in which her research appears in L’atelier noir, her writing journal published in 2011 (2nd ed., 2022)—notably the way she seeks to position her voice, to find the pronoun that fits. This pre-text bears witness to the terms of the problem the author faces: to the complexity of each pronoun considered, and, through their juxtaposition, to the difficulty of their selection. This journal provides insights into her method: the dialectic of her inquiry unfolds through her dialogue with literary and linguistic references, as well as with herself. This “workshop” also sheds light on the implications of approaching style as a process: the search for the appropriate pronoun continues across years and works, ultimately leading her to take distance from the quest itself—eventually questioning the meaning of the difficulties encountered, and of the practice of the “excavation journal” (« journal de fouilles »).

« Ce qu’ils appellent la littérature ». L’atelier noir. Pour une topique de l’écriture

Marie Joqueviel-Bourjea
Since 1982, Annie Ernaux’s writing journal has opened a reflexive space she likens to a “dark place,” in which she sometimes feels as though she is going in circles. Although this “lightless workshop” runs the risk of exposing to view the “pain” that motivates its repetitions, it implicitly defines what this article calls a “topology of writing”—whose implications extend beyond Ernaux’s work to concern all those who, in writing, seek to become conscious of their gestures and create spaces that are none other than the writer’s workshop. This study proposes to read L’atelier noir (2011) not in light of the published work, through the retrospective lens of what ultimately took form, but per se: in the belief that it reveals an independent, prospective dynamic in which the poïetic gesture is expressed with the greatest proximity. Thus, from a perspective that is simultaneously poïetic and generative, this analysis contends that Ernaux’s “atelier noir” models the writer’s workshop more broadly, and that—through the journal’s persistent effort to “explain the quest” and to lay out the “tools of research,” to expose the “method”—it offers points of reference for anyone engaged in a research-creation approach to literature.

Dans l’atelier d’Annie Ernaux. Textures d’une écriture en mouvement

Élise Hugueny-Léger
This article examines Annie Ernaux’s conception of writing as an eminently material practice, by comparing the notion of the workshop as developed in her reflections on the writing process with the materiality of writing as it emerges in the pre-text and manuscripts, notably that of L’autre fille (2011). Although Ernaux distances herself from the contemporary practice of writing workshops, she nonetheless participates in a broader movement of sharing and desacralizing the creative act, questioning the notion of inspiration while also drawing on visual representations of the artist at work. The study of her manuscripts—including the physical features of their material supports—brings to light the texture and depth of the writing process in its resonances with the critical sphere, with everyday life, and with “material life” (to borrow a phrase from Duras: « la vie matérielle »).

Annie Ernaux et l’écriture. Projet, processus et projection

Pierre-Louis Fort
This article explores the metareflexive dimension of Annie Ernaux’s writing by examining the way the author interrogates the act of writing within her works themselves. The aim is not to show how the text generates a metapoetic reflection, but rather to identify, within the work in progress, the role and functioning of these reflexive returns. Drawing on a corpus of works published up to Le jeune homme (2022), the study shows how the text reflects upon itself at multiple levels: in its intention (the text as project), in its unfolding (the text as process), and in its realization (the text as projection). Focused on the metadiscourse that accompanies creation, the article demonstrates that Ernaux’s writing is both a form of inquiry and a construction in motion.

Échos de thèses en recherche-création. Entretien avec Sarah Granereau et Marine Noël, Alain Beaulieu, Béatrice Bonhomme et Claire Legendre

Pierre-Louis Fort, Élise Hugueny-Léger and AMarie Petitjean
This article draws on interviews with two PhD holders in research-creation, Sarah Granereau and Marine Noël, as well as with their thesis supervisors, Alain Beaulieu, Béatrice Bonhomme, Claire Legendre. It examines the influence of Annie Ernaux’s work on their respective creative and scholarly paths, showing how Ernaux’s writing serves as a powerful catalyst—not through imitation, but by fostering a genuine intertextual dialogue. These exchanges illuminate the ways in which Ernaux’s oeuvre opens a fertile space where transmission and experimentation meet and intertwine.

Fragments de lettres d’Annie Ernaux à Sarah Granereau. Inédit

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Henry Bataille et la mise en crise du personnage (Maman Colibri, La femme nue)

Tomasz Kaczmarek
Henry Bataille, whose name has fallen into oblivion, enjoyed undeniable success on Parisian stages at the turn of the 20th century. His abundant body of work is now classified among Boulevard plays; yet, it foreshadows the emergence of modern and contemporary drama. The analysis of two of his masterpieces, Maman Colibri (1904) and La femme nue (1908), reveals that some of their techniques challenge the canonical form of drama, whose classical structure is disrupted by the intrusion of epic elements that manifest in the characters’ narratives. The playwright thus shifts the dramatic action toward a study of suffering souls. Recurring narrative sequences alter the status of the character, who, stripped of active attributes and fixed traits, seems to transcend the action in order to focus on introspective reflections, often of an ontological nature. The study of these two works highlights the evolution of the acting character, who tends to fade behind the reciting character, a witness to the fragility of their existence.

La tragédie de Ravaillac. Le roman historique et psychologique des frères Tharaud

Pierre-Olivier Bouchard and Allison Pratt
This article focuses on La tragédie de Ravaillac by the brothers Jean and Jérôme Tharaud, an innovative yet little-known work that illustrates a literary trend aimed at reinventing the historical novel on the eve of the First World War. This novel offers a problematization of history based on the psychology of the murderer, described as a victim of his profound vulnerability and his inability to understand the political stakes of his time. It distinguishes itself through the elimination of the romantic and picturesque elements that characterize the historical novel of its period. Displacement is carried out through the exploration of Ravaillac’s inner world. In a minimalist and objective style that aspires to accuracy, La Tragédie de Ravaillac, which is not very immersive, leaves a large place for the unanswered questions faced by the Tharaud, who thus attempt to propose a new way of representing the past through fiction, a new historical novel, freed from the legacy of 19th-century popular authors.

Table des illustrations

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