French Literature Reviews - 2026

V. Colonna, Autofiction et autres mythomanies littéraires.
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Vincent Colonna, Autofiction et autres mythomanies littéraires, Paris, Tristram, 2004, 252 p., 21 Euros.

There are many ways to navigate literature, a journey always rich in surprises. Here, we follow the trail of "self-Fabulation," which seems as inextricably bound to fiction as its deepest secret and most unavowed desire. Along the way, it becomes clear that in the 2nd century AD, around the time the novel as a genre was born, a writer named Lucian of Samosata invented the earliest forms of self-Fabulation, which would give rise to prominent literary traditions:

a fantastic tradition, in which the writer masquerades as a shaman to venture—from Dante to Borges, via Cyrano de Bergerac—beyond human limits,

a specular tradition, which multiplies mirror games and winks, as practiced by Rabelais, Cervantes, or Italo Calvino,

a biographical tradition which, under the impetus of Rousseau and Julie, or the New Eloise, yielded the autobiographical novel—a genre discredited from Flaubert to Maurice Blanchot, then brought back into fashion under the name of autofiction in an era of public exhibition of intimacy and reality TV,

not to mention an intrusive form, which emerged with the modern novel and the authorial interventions of a Scarron, a Nabokov, and more recently J. M. Coetzee. The quest for glory, as old as literature itself, and the mechanics of creation have converged to establish "self-Fabulation" as a permanent temptation for fiction. Uneasy about this bond, Plato denounced it in his time. Yet from Petrarch to Céline, Gombrowicz, Philip Roth, or even Michel Leiris, writers have sought and cultivated it through these traditions, whose profound complicity has long been overlooked.

The genealogy of this art of literary mythomania, born in antiquity and brought back to light in a partial and ambiguous manner with autofiction, remained to be undertaken. Do you not sense, reader, that the power of fiction still harbors unprecedented emotions? That this universal art has not yet yielded all its fruits?

VINCENT COLONNA, born in 1958, has published two acclaimed works of fiction with Tristram: Yamaha d'Alger (1999) and Ma vie transformiste (2001). In another life, as a student at EHESS, he was a pioneer in the discovery of autofiction, long before the literary and commercial success of the pseudo-genre that resulted from it.

In Acta Fabula, Vincent Colonna has contributed several reviews of books dealing with "self-fictions":

o " L'invention de soi dans la littérature européenne (1900-1950) "
http://www.Fabula.org/revue/cr/452.php
on: Laurent Mattiussi, Fictions de l'ipséité, Essai sur l'invention narrative de soi,
(Beckett, Hesse, Kafka, Musil, Proust, Woolf), Geneva, Droz, 2002.

o " Défense et illustration du roman autobiographique "
http://www.Fabula.org/revue/cr/468.php
on: Philippe Gasparini, Est-il Je ? Roman autobiographique et autofiction, Paris, Le Seuil, coll. " Poétique ", 2004.

The practice of self-Fabulation has long intertwined with the broader development of narrative prose, engaging writers across centuries who sought to stage themselves within their works. From classical antiquity through the early modern period and into the contemporary era, various authors have experimented with these overlapping modes of self-representation, whether through fantastic voyages, complex mirror games, or autobiographical fiction. These traditions highlight a continuous fascination with the blurring of boundaries between authorial identity and invented personas, a phenomenon that has frequently challenged critical categories and provoked debate among theorists and philosophers alike.

Vincent Colonna's study, Autofiction et autres mythomanies littéraires, explores these diverse manifestations, mapping out a genealogy that connects ancient figures to modern practitioners of autofiction and related literary forms. By examining how writers from different periods have engaged in literary mythomania, the volume discusses a persistent impulse within narrative arts. Readers interested in the history of autobiography, narrative techniques, and the changing relationships between authors and their texts may find this exploration a relevant contribution to ongoing literary discussions.