Louis-René des Forêts and Inner Autobiography
Ian Maclachlan
Research Monographs in French Studies 6028 September 2020

  • ‘As well as providing an essential and indeed unique landmark in studies of des Forêts, Maclachlan’s volume succeeds in combining close attention to the power of the negative as it affects the task of writing and to the poignancies of a life lived in its orbit.’ — Patrick ffrench, French Studies 76.1, January 2022, 132 (full text online)
  • ‘In emphasizing the convergence between Des Forêts’s enterprise and the late work of Derrida... Maclachlan is able to demonstrate the singular excess of language over its own avowed deficiencies, and provide affirmative evidence, not of the possibility of autobiography, but of its far-reaching, never-ending impossibility.’ — Leslie Hill, Modern and Contemporary France 30.4, 2022, 539-40 (full text online)