Abstract EN:

Based on the analysis of 25 websites focused on the writing of personal diaries, this work lies on the hypothesis that the intimate diary as a genre is metamorphosed when published on-line and read by external readers. What emerges is that the Web tends to strengthen the communication dimension of the diary. Such transformation takes place at different levels, such as that of the discourse, the editorial and formating process. On-line personal diaries are more generally characterised by a mixing of genres, practises and forms. The natural hybridity of the diary is thus reinforced by the appearance of a rhetoric intended for an audience which leads the external reader to be both the confident and the addressee of the diarist. Besides, whilst they first aimed at rendering the text legible when finalising the presentation of the diary, both the computer publishing tools and the increasing use of the paratext actually contribute to the creation of a scriptural distance which transforms the diary. Yet, even if there is interference between the computer and the text we can note that diaries found on the Internet are still written and read like they used to be. They are part of a text and paper culture that is handwritten and that tends to make on-line diaries part of the tradition of handwritten works.