Text-Unveiling or Historical Methodology Applied to Literature: Mes soixante ans, by Constance de Salm

Abstract

When a work of literature doesn’t aim to mix fact with fiction but aims to write the reality with the cognitive operations that it’s assumed, the literature becomes a tool of explanation and comprehension of the world. Mes soixante ans is a literary text which can present itself as a historical work by using the type of discourse that it illustrates. After analyzing the hybrid character of the work, the position of the “I” of the method, the movement of the sources and the evidence, the chronological structuring of the document as well as comparatism, are the various elements of the historical methodology; with the help of which the historical intelligibility of the poem is then demonstrated.