Micro-(h)istorical narratives by Claude Duneton and Jean Echenoz – The purpose of this article is a comparative study of two recent French novels, Le Monument. Roman vrai by Claude Duneton (2004) and 1914 by Jean Echenoz (2012), which, in spite of formal and ideological differences, approach the theme of the Great War in a way similar to micro-historical frameworks. Like historians representing this field of historiography, both writers depict the four years of the First World War by focusing on a small community and a geographical space limited to a small location on the home-front. Referring to the distinction between roman de l’historien (the historian’s novel) and roman du témoin (the witness’s novel) proposed by Emmanuel Bouju, the author of the article analyses the strategies used by the novelists to create an indirect witness’s point-of-view, juxtaposed with the perspective of the contemporary recipient of the events that happened a hundred years ago.

The novels of Jean Echenoz are particularly known for their playfulness with which they deconstruct the codes of the paraliterary genres, as well as for a casualness with which they approach the topos of the modernist novel. The production of this author of the last two decades nevertheless testifies of a new direction that slips in the biographical. Like many writers of his generation, Jean Echenoz deals in Jérôme Lindon (2001), Ravel (2006), Courir (2008) and Des éclairs (2010) with the lives of illustrious personalities of our era. We can wonder what the objective of this approach of a writer, who shows his admiration with regard to his characters, is. Is it a simple tribute or need to fill out gaps in history that we will never complete for lack of evidence to support? This paper also tries to deal with the problem of the genre of these texts that lie at the edge between fiction and factual literature.