‘We have nothing better than testimony’: History and memory in French war narratives

Abstract

Art and testimony are often yoked together by the real-life violence of war. The First World War represents a moment in the French literary field which saw an explosion of war narratives. The legitimacy of some of these narratives was questioned after the war by Jean Norton Cru, who examined their validity as testimonies in a book significantly entitled Témoins. Following Ricœur’s claim that historical discourse is, in any case, ‘metaphorical’, I argue that in fact these texts provoke an extension or revision of historical meaning and understanding, expressing a dynamic interrelation between the prefigured field of discursive forms and the fluctuating field of material happenings, and as such act as testimonies. They also, more widely, contribute to what Ricœur has called an ‘ethics of memory’.