Le sel n’est pas salé

Depressive (anti-)heroes populate the current French literary landscape to a significant extent. In this study, such characters are located philologically, and paradigmatic texts by Philippe Labro, Antoine Sénanque, Philippe Delerm, Édouard Levé, Michel Houellebecq and Thierry Beinstingel are analysed in terms of their aesthetics as a specific contribution to poetological knowledge in order to fathom the dynamics of depression in literary and cultural studies. Specifically, the study aims to explore medical and psychoanalytical narratives in literature and to examine the extent to which literature can offer complementary but also divergent perspectives on this knowledge.