On the same subject, see Gabriel Merle, 'La Biographie et ses problÃ¨mes: interpellations, frontiÃ¨res, perspectives,' Les Langues Modernes, Paris, No. In 'Biography and Criticism,' a lecture delivered in Los Angeles in 1982, George Simson, in order to designate his own biographical paradigms or declensions of judgment, proposed the coinage 'biodigms.' Number 3 of his 18 biodigms reads: 'The ontogeny of the individual recapitulates the philogeny of the culture of both subject and biographer.' The kinship between the two analyses is obvious. Gabriel Merle University of Paris 7 NOTES 1. In his introduction, he complains there is not, parallel to 'psychologie,' 'thÃ©ologie,' or the more recent 'narratologie,' something called 'biographologie.' In fact his book might well be the first treatise in the discipline. By the scope of his information, the perceptiveness and depth of his analyses, his gift for conceptualisation, Daniel MadelÃ©nat has written an important book. As for indulging in excessive (though admittedly economical) sesquipedality, it is the lesser sin.

Anyway it will be possible to add index and glossary to the next editionÂ-which might be an English edition, a highly desirable thing. A glossary would have been a welcome minimum.3 In fact, this book also points towards the making of something more graphic than a glossary and its burden of cross-references : a chart of the notional field of the discipline.4 These are minor observations. The reader legitimately wonders how the late comers fit in the pattern. 'homÃ©obiographie,' 'biographomachies,' 'contre-biographie,' on pages 86, 92, 103 respectively), while, as is natural, his biographical typology comes at the beginning (pp. REVIEWS 365 Now, considering MadelÃ©nat is never so good as when he establishes criteria and proposes a taxonomy, one may express a regret: some of the new terms he proposes for filling the lexical field of biography are scattered throughout his book (e.g. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Luis buñuel my last sigh