Ekphrasis, Illustration, and Adaptation: Annie Ernaux’s Intermedial Autobiographic and Photographic Production

As a genetic critic interested in word and image relationships in the illustrated manuscripts of various writers and artists, I find myself confronted regularly with the theoretical ramifications of the theories of illustrations, intermediality, photography, ekphrasis and adaptation in my quest to analyze the complexities of my literary corpus of unpublished and published autobiographical narratives punctuated with images. My attention is focused on Annie Ernaux’s autobiographic/photographic production. I reference the hand-written manuscripts of her memoir (Les Années/The Years) her “Photographic Diary” (Écrire la vie) illustrated with numerous family photos, and the intermedial theatrical adaptation of The Years, to trace the metamorphosis of Ernaux’s photographic ekphrasis from one text to another and from one medium to another. I argue that ekphrasis adapts images into words, and is a form of intermedial reference that can have illustrative functions and engages the “dynamics common to all modes of adaptation” (Newell, Adaptation and Illustration: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach. In the Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. Thomas Leitch, 477–493. Oxford University Press, 2017).