Autofiction: “imaginaire” and reality, an interesting mix leading to the illusion of a genre?
Autofiction: “imaginaire” and reality, an interesting mix leading to the illusion of a genre?

Summary/Abstract: Serge Doubrovsky, author and literary critic, coined the term “autofiction” in 1977 to refer to the type of fiction in which reality and the imaginaire are intertwined. Other writers and thinkers have written about ‘circonfession’ (Jacques Derrida), ‘automythobiographie’ (Claude Louis-Combet), fiction-bilan (Poirot-Delpech), roman-miroir (H. Juin), bi-autographie (Bellman-Noël), prose de mémoire (Jacques Roubaud). Little did Doubrovsky know that the neologism he had marketed would take flight in various directions, at times the fictional being integrated as dominant, at other times, the reality. This article intends to clarify certain theoretical assumptions with regard to autofiction while counterbalancing the theory with practical examples from francophone 20th and 21st century literature.

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