The Refusal of Traditional Autobiography:

Autobiography is a literary genre that involves individual subjectivity. However, this subjectivity is opposed to the rigor of its theoretical categories established by the theorist Philippe Lejeune. An important redefinition of the theoretical basis of autobiography was stimulated by the manifestation of the New Novel, which revolutionized the traditional novel with new novelistic practices. Promoter of this movement, Nathalie Sarraute employs the new literary techniques in most of her works and also in her autobiography Enfance. These techniques are opposed to the usual principles of the autobiographical genre and, in fact, the novel Enfance is part of an original approach that implements the refusal of traditional autobiography. This thesis demonstrates that the author has detached himself from certain concepts specific to the autobiographical genre by using new literary practices whose novelty can be interpreted as an opposition to the established autobiographical genre.