When Annie Ernaux voices her mistrust vis-à-vis the romantic, it is a principle of deformation of the real in favour of the sensational which she refuses. Her writing is nevertheles nurtured on a properly romantic repertoire functioning as a vector of recognition : the romantic topoï show the way to the figuration of the living experience, however never without a critical or reflexive support. At the core of Annie Ernaux’s « ethnotextual » project, moreover with the contribution of sociology, lies a dialectic of the mask : the romantic eventually assumes the value of a revelation, not of the original, but of what, behind the singular autobiographical narrative, establishes the human experience as what can be shared by all.