'C’est un ouvrage qui sera compris plus tard' Conceptual and stylistic innovation in the espace automythologique of Raymond Guérin

Busby, Michael George (2026) 'C’est un ouvrage qui sera compris plus tard' Conceptual and stylistic innovation in the espace automythologique of Raymond Guérin. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The work of Raymond Guérin (1905-1955), always a marginal figure even during his own lifetime, is a place of experimentation and ingenuity that makes it worthy of greater attention. One of the major causes of the incompréhension which typified reception of Guérin’s works was its constant innovation, a refusal to stay in one place stylistically, which made a reading as such problematic for contemporaries.

This thesis aims to offer for the first time the comprehensive reading that Guérin sought. It attempts to explain the architecture of the overall corpus, and examines the place within the whole of each individual work. One of its contentions is that amongst the many new ideas introduced by Guérin are concepts which pre-date by three decades similar techniques considered revolutionary in the autofictional work of Serge Doubrovsky.

Taking and redirecting the ideas of Philippe Gasparini, Philippe Lejeune, Jean-Marie Schaeffer and Gérard Genette, the thesis posits the need to see Guérin’s individual works as blocks in the creation of an espace automythologique. This label describes Guérin’s global project of endlessly re-presenting the self, a modern Essais but deploying a range of genres and modes of writing. Guérin’s work is seen as an exercice de style on a grand scale, the literary equivalent, to use an image employed by Guérin himself, of exposing a metal bar to different acids and observing its reaction.

The thesis uses as its structure the tri-partite generic schema that, in the image of Gide, Guérin adopted for his corpus. Under each heading - mythes, confessions, fictions - it elucidates Guérin’s conception of the term, on the basis of the works themselves and public and private utterances. ‘Confessions’ describes the apprentice writer’s developing conception of writing about the self, from the formulaic and classical opening text (Zobain) to the highly skilled and political Quand vient la fin. ‘Fictions’ explores Guérin’s particular understanding of ‘the fictional’ via his innovative ‘mythologie de la réalité’, and examines the three different formats conceived for the published volumes of the autofictional project Ebauche. The ‘mythes’ section highlights the original use made by Guérin of base myth. The thesis identifies two radical new processes: remythification, that is the repurposing of mythemes to tell an entirely different story, and metamythification, the incorporation within the text of reflection on the genesis and processes of myth itself.

An important part of this discussion is the paratext of each work. The thesis explains how and why, in the work of Guérin, the paratext is such an active space, reasons rooted in the writer’s impatience with the reception accorded his work and his desire to frame it himself, and examines the innovatory ways in which the writer exploits it.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Modern Languages and Cultures
• Supervisor's Name: Syrotinski, Professor Michael and Kerr, Dr. Greg
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-86286
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 Oct 2026 11:28
• Last Modified: 30 Oct 2026 11:37
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.86286
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/86286