The first extensive English language study of Julien Gracq's work, this book focuses on the role of history in his two major novels and his critical essays. Carol Murphy draws on contemporary theories of allegory, textuality, and history in her analysis of the interplay of fictional and factual history in Gracq's writings. She also shows that history's rhetorical dimension, as presented by Gracq, puts forth the hypothesis that narratives of history influence actual events. In addition, she uses Freudian theory to investigate the links between Walter Benjamin's understanding of history as ruin, Gracq's sense of catastrophic history, and Andre Breton's notion of the "emotional coefficient" of history.