Literature, City and Urban Imaginaries: the Basque Country and French Literature

Abstract

The present paper offers an analysis of the evolution of the literary representation of the Basque Country, comparing the image constructed by Pierre Loti at the end of the 19th Century with the image of the Basque Country that appears in literary works of the 21st Century, more exactly in the novels of Jean Echenoz and Marie Darrieussecq. The paper’s aim is to analyse what is the place and the function of the Basque Country in the imagination of French contemporary writers, an imagination profoundly linked to the city and the urban reality, and compare this imagination with the principal imaginary heritages of the Basque Country