The Essays of Marguerite Yourcenar: Ethics in Pieces

The Yourcenarian essays, rich and protean texts, implicitly deal with ethics; there we find an ethics that does not speak its name. Principles transmitted through stories, values articulated through personal anecdotes, nostalgic looks at the current state of different places visited in the past dot the collections of Yourcenarian essays. In our study, we identify and analyse the strategies used by Yourcenar to create a better world. She does not set herself up as a moralist but presents us with concrete situations where people’s indifference leads to unimaginable disasters. Indeed, her piercing gaze shows us that everything is connected.