Annie Ernaux Nobel Prize

Congratulations to Annie Ernaux today, Nobel laureate 2022 for Literature. 

My monograph examines the writing practices of three contemporary French writers working in the closing decades of the twentieth century in Paris. The aim is to discover if travel writing, a practice chosen by all three, belongs to a specific discourse which suits the writing practice of the authors in their treatment of a particular subject. Within this the study attempts to discover defining aspects of what may be called the genre of travel writing, by finding parallels in the work of all three writers and then by examining the uses of these aspects or themes to understand what they offer the writer as a means of expression. One work in particular is studied in detail as the key text for this research, this is the second travel journal by Annie Ernaux (2000) La Vie extérieure.

Read more about her travel writing here on ResearchGate at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267331805_Traversing_Paris_French_Travel_Writing_Practices_in_the_Late_Twentieth_Century_an_Analysis_of_the_Work_of_Annie_Ernaux_Francois_Maspero_and_Jean_Rolin

Please cite as: Mansfield, C. (2012) Traversing Paris: French Travel Writing Practices in the Late Twentieth Century; an Analysis of the Work of Annie Ernaux, François Maspero and Jean Rolin, Saarbrucken: Akademikerverlag.

The contemporary French writer, Annie Ernaux is better known for her biographical writings on her parents’ working-class lives and certain works of autobiography, which is why her departure into the travel writing genre is significant for a study of writing practices.  As an author, she has a clear choice of practices which have served her well since the mid-1970s in expressing her ideas and histories successfully.   Her work is studied on undergraduate programmes across the UK, and more recently in the US and is the subject of two book length studies (McIlvanney, 2001) and a second which explores her writing styles from Lyn Thomas (2005) Annie Ernaux, à la première personne.  Ernaux was a lecturer for the distance learning university in France, CNED.  She was born at Lillebonne in September 1940. In the last decade of the twentieth century she published two collections of what appear to be diaries of everyday life.  They are documents of her daily commuting using the RER train and metro from a suburb of Paris, Val d’Oise in Cergy, into the city centre.  The two books in this series are (1993) Journal du dehors and (2000) La Vie extérieure.