La littérarité d’une collection iconobiographique: Les « Albums de la Pléiade » (Gallimard)

The "Albums de la Pléiade", a collection designed to promote Gallimard's famous "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", presents a series of volumes dedicated to the lives of writers previously published by the Pléiade, based on a rich iconography accompanied by a biographical text. However, in many of the introductory texts to the 'Albums', the authors run counter to readers' expectations and explicitly deny that their works belong to the biographical genre. This article examines the reasons for such a rejection of biography within the collection, taking into account the position of biography as a largely marginalised genre within the literary field, as well as its relationship to iconography, which is claimed to be a central element of the generic composition of the "Albums de la Pléiade".