Sam Ferguson
I am a researcher and translator in modern French literature. I studied at New College, Oxford, and held a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford from 2014 to 2018. My research interests include life-writing (such as diaries and autobiography), twentieth and twenty-first-century fiction, and theoretical issues pertaining to the nature of literature and authorship. I have a particular attachment to the work of André Gide and Roland Barthes.
My doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing’ explored extremely varied forms and practices of diary-writing through the work of André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Queneau, Roland Barthes, and Annie Ernaux. A historical account follows these developments from the Symbolist aesthetic of Gide’s early works, to the monumental author-œuvre of his Journal 1889–1939, through the so-called ‘Death of the Author’, and return of the subject in the late 1970s, and finishing with the modern field of life-writing. I have now published this research as a monograph with OUP.
My current research explores the relation between the diary and the literary œuvre since the 1940s, including the relation of the diary with autobiography and autofiction, and its use in testimonies from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This project is provisionally entitled ‘When is a diary a book?’.
My doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing’ explored extremely varied forms and practices of diary-writing through the work of André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Queneau, Roland Barthes, and Annie Ernaux. A historical account follows these developments from the Symbolist aesthetic of Gide’s early works, to the monumental author-œuvre of his Journal 1889–1939, through the so-called ‘Death of the Author’, and return of the subject in the late 1970s, and finishing with the modern field of life-writing. I have now published this research as a monograph with OUP.
My current research explores the relation between the diary and the literary œuvre since the 1940s, including the relation of the diary with autobiography and autofiction, and its use in testimonies from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This project is provisionally entitled ‘When is a diary a book?’.
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Book by Sam Ferguson
The second part follows developments in diary-writing after the Second World War, inflected by radical changes in attitudes towards the writing subject. Raymond Queneau's works published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara (1947-1962) used the diary playfully at a time when the writing subject was condemned by the literary avant-garde. Roland Barthes's experiments with the diary (1977-1979) took it to the extremes of its formal possibilities, at the point of a return of the writing subject. Annie Ernaux's published diaries (1993-2011) demonstrate the role of the diary in the modern field of life-writing. Throughout the century, the diary has repeatedly been used to construct an oeuvre and author, but also to call these fundamental literary concepts into question.
Articles and chapters by Sam Ferguson
Book Reviews by Sam Ferguson
Translations by Sam Ferguson
The second part follows developments in diary-writing after the Second World War, inflected by radical changes in attitudes towards the writing subject. Raymond Queneau's works published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara (1947-1962) used the diary playfully at a time when the writing subject was condemned by the literary avant-garde. Roland Barthes's experiments with the diary (1977-1979) took it to the extremes of its formal possibilities, at the point of a return of the writing subject. Annie Ernaux's published diaries (1993-2011) demonstrate the role of the diary in the modern field of life-writing. Throughout the century, the diary has repeatedly been used to construct an oeuvre and author, but also to call these fundamental literary concepts into question.