Romain Gary/Emile Ajar: Etude stylistique d'une fraude litteraire

Theoreticians of style, from Buffon to Barthes, postulate that style is dictated by the author's personality and is unique to each writer. This thesis tests this hypothesis in light of the pseudonymous works of Romain Gary. It applies standard authorship attribution methods and evaluates their reliability.;In 1974 Gary, a recipient of the Prix Goncourt, published Gros-Calin under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar and a year later, published La Vie devant soi under the Ajar name. Meanwhile, he also published two other novels Au-dela de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable (1975) and Clair de femme (1977) under his own name. When he received the Prix Goncourt for La Vie devant soi, he became the first author to achieve such a feat. After his suicide in 1980, Gary admitted in a posthumous confession that Ajar was his pseudonym.;Romain Gary thus provides an excellent example for authorship attribution study which is the analysis of stylistic idiosyncracies of an author as an index of authenticity.;Chapter 1 sets out the problem and details methodology used in the thesis. Chapters 2 to 4 give an account of Gary's life and describe the plot of each novel. Chapter 5 shows similarities between the Gary and Ajar novels and chapter 6 looks at the history of literary fraud in France. Chapter 7 details the types of statistical work done on vocabulary distribution and chapter 8 describes the various methodologies used in the past in the field of authorship attribution. Chapter 9 defines statistical terms and approaches used in the thesis.;Chapters 10 to 13 deal with the statistical tests. They all show that Gary uses a similar style in novels written under his own name and in Gros-Calin, but uses a different one in La Vie devant soi. The tests indicate that certain elements of style are not always unique to a given individual and that a writer can indeed disguise his style at will.