Marguerite Duras: The masked Queen

Abstract

‘’ L’Amant and Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique, in which autobiographic ambiguities; reality and fantasy; erotizm and cinematographic images and defacements are brought together; relay the personal story of the author and the content of the work to the reader in such an extraordinarily complicated way that this deroots the reader from classical autobiographic novels and habits. The reality of Dumas wears so many different masks in both novels. Thus, reality, identity and memoirs are enriched through paradoxes and exorbitance. And thus, autobiography becomes intertwined with fiction. The reality of Dumas becomes a most beautiful, a charming and an enigmatic Romanesque and cinematographic style. Then, finally, the reader faces a mysterious and an enigmatic problematic which taxes him/her. Questions overlap and intertwine; the principle question is: “Quelle est la part autobiographique?”: “Which part is autobiographic?”, “How far and in which context are autobiographic features present?”. In other words, M. Duras appears before the reader as a perplexing and mysterious masked queen. This study deals with these intertwined questions.