World Maze And Yourcenar’s Autobiographical Writing

Autobiography is a mixture of literature and history, which contains not only literary irreality but also historical statement. As the origin of individual life, family is the basis for autobiographer establishing self-identity; and individual experience represented in works in many viewpoints and multi-forms is an important way to establish self-identity for autobiographer; in autobiographical works, selfhood refers to and illuminates the other mutually, and only taking the other as reference can analyze and illuminate selfhood thoroughly.As a "immortal" in French literature of20th century. Yourcenar is good at combining individuality and commonness, concrete and abstract, presenting individuality in commonness, and mentioning universal in specialness. Her works can be substantially divided into two types: one is historical novel, taking historical figures and events as theme to show a period of history; the other is family novel, taking her family records as main subject to analyze individual spirit experience. The greatest feature of the later is presenting and establishing selfhood in the other’s viewpoint. In such novel, Yourcenar achieves her purposes of establishing self-identity, world citizenship based on a family history, by means of two narrative strategies, and with reference to the three relationships between selfhood and the other.Taking serial novel World Maze as study object, in the autobiographical point of view, on the basis of family history, autobiographical narrative strategy and cross-reference of selfhood and the other, this paper analyzes the intrinsic value of Yourcenar’s autobiographical writing, seeks actual Yourcenar hidden in many persons.