Self-Narration and Autofiction in Jean-Luc Lagarce's Juste la fin du monde

Juste la fin du monde [ It's Only the End of the World ] by Jean-Luc Lagarce is a play that portrays a family gathering on a Sunday to mark the return of the eldest son who, long estranged from his family, has come back with the intention of announcing his imminent death to his loved ones. For a reader (and spectator) familiar with the author's biography, the text of the play contains significant similarities to Lagarce's life, and the main character, Louis, resembles Lagarce in many aspects. What is the nature of the elements of self-writing in the play? How can they be categorized? What are their functions? This analysis of the elements of self-writing based on a definition of its various categories has allowed this article to identify that the play lies on the boundary between autofiction and autonarration. This is because it stages a dramatization of an episode from the narrator's life while employing the three processes Gasparini (2009) mentioned for defining autonarration: fragmentation, metadiscourse, and alterity. Thus this study has determined the possibility that autonarration in this context serves a retrospective function, a reconstruction of the author's self as an attempt to articulate the unspeakable aspects of his existence.