ABSTRACT
If autobiography is a sort of mise en scène, in which the personal myth ultimately created depends as much on the ideologies current in society as on the ‘facts’ experienced, then the early nineteenth century in France produced one of the most fertile breedinggrounds for such myths. The Utopian writings of Saint-Simon and his followers led as much to a quest for a mythical experience, in time, in space and in personal interaction, as to a demand for the betterment of society. One area where the lived event is readily transmuted into ‘fiction’ by the very process of its representation is that of the journey. Every journey may be seen as potential allegory, just as lived experience may be allegorised as journey. We will explore this exchange between life and archetype in the writings of Flora Tristan (1803-44), but it must be remembered that she is paradigmatic of a whole group of writers for whom the voyage was as much a mystical as a physical rite of passage. The traveller’s tale was a literary staple of the times, and the destination might be as close and as real as Spain or Italy, or as fantastic as the Icaria of Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie (1840). The voyage readily becomes the quest and lends itself as much to autography, which I have characterised as a self-portrait to live by, as to autothanatography, which I have suggested is rather a self-portrait to die by, a way of guiding reception and perception.
