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Memory Poetics in Annie Ernaux’s Works

Authors

Abdullayeva Firdavskhon Azamjon qizi

Rubric:Linguistics
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This article examines the memory poetics in Annie Ernaux’s literary works, analyzing how the 2022 Nobel laureate transforms personal remembrance into collective social history through innovative narrative strategies. Drawing on phenomenological theories of memory from Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, alongside Bourdieu’s sociological framework, this study investigates Ernaux’s development of «auto-socio-biography» as a distinct literary methodology. Through textual analysis of seven major works including “Les Années”(2008), “La Place” (1983), and “L’Événement (2000)”, the research identifies three primary dimensions of Ernaux’s memory poetics: the transpersonal narrative voice that dissolves individual boundaries, the clinical “écriture plate” that resists literary embellishment, and the integration of class consciousness with temporal experience. The findings reveal how Ernaux’s texts function as sites of cultural memory, bridging personal trauma and historical witness through what she terms “ethnography of the self”. Her treatment of shame, class mobility, and gendered experience demonstrates memory’s dual function as both individual preservation and collective testimony. This study contributes to contemporary memory studies by illuminating how literary form can mediate between subjective experience and sociological analysis, offering new perspectives on autobiographical writing’s capacity to articulate collective consciousness through individual remembrance.

Keywords

memory poetics
Annie Ernaux
auto-socio-biography
French literature
collective memory
class consciousness
phenomenology
cultural memory

Authors

Abdullayeva Firdavskhon Azamjon qizi

References:

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022.

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