Las anécdotas en las Memorias del conde de Ségur

Abstract

The account of anecdotes in memoirs gives an insight into the writer’s personality at the same time that it unfolds their verisimilitude and individuality, two features which are present in Count Louis Philippe de Ségur’s Mémoires ou souvenirs et anecdotes. Within the genre of memoirs, literary anecdotes are a useful source of information about the author who evokes them and the topic he writes about. After careful reading of his memoirs, I have been able to value his subtle literary style, which reveals his enormous skill to evoke events and to give an objective view about them. In this work, I have distinguished two types of anecdotes: those which are of a more personal kind and those which are historical, social and cultural, having the latter an important influence on these fields. Thanks to this work, I have been able to get to know more deeply Count Segur’s life, who always tried to give an objective view of reality to counteract the negative foreign criticisms against French politics in the pre-revolutionary period.