« Monsieur, JE JOUE MON PERSONNAGE » : Jean Lorrain, construire sa propre légende

Abstract

This article explores the various textual and visual representations of Belle Époque scandalous writer and journalist Jean Lorrain. Throughout his career, Lorrain never ceased to associate with his fictional heroes; he also authorised the blurring of the frontiers between reality and fiction in his oeuvre, as well as in his personal life. The intense self-reflexivity that runs through his journalistic and literary production helps us understand the development of a subjectivity – or even, an authorial ethos – at a time when media dramatisation and literary mystification proliferated. The aim of this article is to prove that Lorrain actively participated in the construction of his own legend through three levels of representation: real, textual and imaginary.