ÉCRIRE AVEC LA VOIX DU PEUPLE: LE CAS D’ANNIE ERNAUX

Abstract

A member of the dominated class, Annie Ernaux ‘climbs the social ladder’ to become a member the dominant class as she marries and her studies. Although she was tempted to write novels at the beginning of her career, she then concentrates on autobiographical or “autosociobiographical” writing; the aim of such writing is to resurrect the past of a social class which she shared with her parents. Her social path influenced her personality as well as her choice of writing. Her modest childhood and adolescence in her parents’ café-grocery made her particularly sensitive to the language used. It is in a private school run by nuns that she discovered the difference between the language spoken at home and the language of the schooled. It was like a revelation and she would never stop recalling these differences. Annie Ernaux gives shape to her narratives in the manner of an ethnologist or a writer- sociologist. The stylistic objectivity and neutrality of her language are extremely important to her. Through her work, we observe that her social roots define the themes and style of her writing