The present paper analyses Carnets du voyage en Égypte by a French painter and writer, Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876), using the concept of autobiogeography. The concept allows to examine how the author of a geographical description may be seen throughout this description and how s/he is influenced by the space. The paper argues that the personality of Fromentin emerges from his travel notes even though they are focused mainly on the description of the Egyptian space and the forms “I” or “we” appear there rarely. Three aspects of Fromentin’s personality may be seen through the analyses of his geographical descriptions of Egypt: the Orientalist painter enthusiastic towards the space; the traveler marked by his previous travels to Algeria who in Egyptian spaces sees Algerian ones; and the man who feels old and tired, refuses to discover the Egyptian space and who just wants to come back home.

A roman à clef, where the presence of fictional and nonfictional elements is obvious, is a powerful framework for literary portraits of the author’s contemporaries. The degree of deformation, be it glamorizing or devaluing, depends on several factors, among which the pleasure of playing hide and seek is not the least. Each reference, even a demeaning one, brings out of the shadow of the past both prominent and background characters, as well as important events, all from the author’s point of view. Through this display, an image of a very complex environment emerges, where the worst rubs shoulders with the best, and where the constraints of daily life or loyalty to ideals impose difficult choices with very serious consequences. The author observes the sociological phenomena that affect her environment and, while making sharp criticisms, seeks to find a remedy for the wound that destroys Art and the Artist.

Taking up Antoine Compagnon’s thesis, according to which Sodom and Gomorrah constitutes a privileged place to look at the whole Proustian cycle, the article focuses on the social dimension of the novel, as well as on cruelty. In this context, the image of Jews and servants, and the role of the baron de Charlus are studied in particular. For the author also discusses the vision of love, especially homosexual, to show how Proust’s approach stems from sadism and masochism.

We will examine the largely ethical vocation of Romain Gary's memorial writing project, which leads it to metamorphose itself into a literary tomb of the forgotten dead. We will then discuss, from a more narratological point of view, how this memory emerges untimely in the narrative and sometimes frees itself from it to signify the transcendent character of the name and the face. Finally, we will show that Gary goes beyond the somewhat naive vision of the memory as a mere recorder of events or images by associating it with the imagination to give it a poetic and counter-historical use.