Ann Jefferson. Biography and the Question of Literature in France

Ann Jefferson’s provocative study, Biography and the Question of Literature in France, examines not only the relationship between literature and biography but also the critical discourse that has accompanied what she calls “the blur of generic boundaries, blending biography with autobiography, or fiction with reportage and the essay.” Jefferson’s limpid prose makes this study a pleasure to read. She opens her study with the eighteenth century when the term biography first entered the French l...