FROM THE ÉCRITURE BLANCHE OF ALBERT CAMUS TO THE ÉCRITURE PLATE OF ANNIE ERNAUX

Abstract

Albert Camus is one of the pioneers of a writing tradition that Roland Barthes describes as «écriture blanche» which privileges the minimalist dimension of the style and which is practiced by many post-war writers since then, although the motivations behind their interest in such a writing may differ. Annie Ernaux, whose writing is qualified by the writer herself as «plate», or «blanche» by some critics, chooses to use such a style in order to acknowledge a life subject to necessity (La Place, p:24). For this end, she refers to a writer that she had the opportunity to meet during her college education in modern literature. Beside stylistic and intertextual resemblances, the influence of Camus’ work on Ernaux’s is so intense that the incipit of Une Femme dedicated to her mother begins with the news about the death of the author-narrator’s mother; just like the work of Camus, The Stranger. Doing so, on the one hand, Ernaux wanted to give tribute to the writer whose influence has been the deepest on her own work. On the other, she uses an intertextual and dialogic method in order to give her text the evocation power that Camus has left in the consciousness of thousands of readers throughout the world, particularly the narrator-characters in her works. Comparing some of these authors’ works dialogically and intertextually, we seek to demonstrate that not only Camus is continuing to exist hic et nunc through the style of contemporary writers who keep giving him tribute through their «écriture blanchâtre» but also that his style can be imitated.