Abstract

This paper promotes a critical study of a specific kind of theoretical approach that is often associated with archival literature. The object of our criticism is Marco Codebò’s Narrating from the Archive. Novels, Records, and Bureaucrats in the Modern Age. Through a materialist method, we aim to tackle the archival literary trope not as a 19^th century tendency born out of the need to constitute a discursive formation of truth, but rather as a useful device to represent a recently consolidated bourgeois sociability. In order to do that, we engage in a dialogue with Codebò’s analyses of two 19^th century “archival novels”: Balzac’s Colonel Chabert, and Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet.

Keywords:
Archival Literatures; “Archival Novels”; Colonel Chabert; Bouvard and Pécuchet