Voltaire and the autobiographical taboo.

The goal of this program is to illustrate, through this unexplored corpus, both the existence and the impact of an "autobiographical taboo" which has dominated the classical epistemology until the publication of Rousseau's autobiography in 1782. The autobiographical work of Rousseau has led to the so-called "autobiographical pact" (Philippe Jeune) that has already been well studied at present. Through this revolutionary "pact" an individual exposes himself entirely at the public scene. The basic statement of this new program is that the classical age was not dominated by a "pact" but rather by an autobiographical "taboo". This "taboo", which has not yet been studied systematically, is expressed strikingly through the wordt of Blaise Pascal: "Le moi est haïssable". The basic hypothesis of the project is that, before the revolution brought about by Rousseau's work, the self could only speak about itself by the means of fiction. Fiction, such as in the first person-novel, formed a legitimizing discourse through which speaking about the "ego" became possible. Each of the three Voltaire-texts encloses a legitimizing strategy in which fiction is used. The analysis of these texts allows the researcher to map the fictional strategies used by the autobiographer to present his "self" in a legitimate way on the public scene.

Keywords:Autobiographical taboo, Voltaire

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies