Inside and out : photographic metaphors in Marguerite Duras's The Lover

![CDATA[Marguerite Duras’s The Lover is undeniably a book about writing. The novel is narrated by an ageing writer and the autobiographical similarities of that writer to Marguerite Duras are striking. It is also a book in which photographs figure prominently. An imaginary photograph of the writer as a young woman haunts the novel’s pages. In fact that “photograph” is a memory, but Duras affords it the status of a photograph, though it does not exist. This paper will argue that the connection between writing and photography in The Lover is metaphorical and what Duras is highlighting is the similarity between the two forms in representing the self. The photographic metaphor enables Duras to write about aspects of writing the self that would evade description in literal language.]]