The Figure of the Imaginary Father in the Autobiographical Writing of M. Yourcenar

In the present paper I read Marguerite Yourcenar’s autobiographical trilogy Le labyrinthe du monde through Kristeva’s concept of the imaginary father. My interpretation aims to trace the way the androgynous figure of the imaginary father acts in a liberatory way and also stimulates Yourcenar’s own work. The retroactive invention of an imaginary origin is associated with the figure of a loving father. Yourcenar traces her genealogy – on the one hand, she identifies with her familial lineage; on the other, she claims that the composition of her ancestry relates much more to her literary precursors and her fictional characters. Yourcenar’s identification appears not on the side of matricide and the powers of horror, but exactly the opposite – on the side of the imaginary father and creative potential.