Alain-fournier et l'ecriture romanesque des modeles anglo-saxons a l'experience du morcellement
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Abstract EN:
The work of alain-fournier which is born of no literary doctrine and does not propose any has left a blank which critics have striven to fill. The worker of the dead son must own his debt to the culture of the fathers. Hence the building up of interpretations which, trying incessantly to connect the work to a genealogy, subtitute the presumed models for the text itself and offer mythical filiations. Alain-fournier will successively become "peguy's spiritual son", a hero and a martyr, the offspring of gerard de nerval and the french romantic movement, the regionalistic writer, though he had made it a point of honour "to think in accordance with himself". In fact this vacuum could be ascribed to people's ignorance of alain-fournier's enduring acquaintance with anglo-saxon literature. His knowledge of english, his presence in london in 1905, his vast amount of reading, especially of anglo-saxon adventure stories, can be perceived throughout his books. However his desire to write novels as his books. However his desire to write novels as they write them in britain will lead him to the purpose of carrying out a syncretic attempt at fitting an english adventure into a french "chef-lieu de canton". From that very impossibility would arise the powerful nostalgia for diversity which pervades le grand meaulnes. And thus one would not witness the construction of a myth but its destruction. As a result we have here a work made of bits and pieces without any principle of reference in which the ideal is nothing more than a pseudo-foundation.
Abstract FR:
L'oeuvre d'alain-fournier qui n'est issue d'aucune doctrine litteraire et n'en propose aucune a laisse place a un vide que la critique s'est efforce de combler. L'oeuvre du fils mort doit dire sa dette envers la culture des peres. Ainsi se construisent des interpretations qui, cherchant toujours a rattacher l'oeuvre a une genealogie, substituent les modeles presumes au texte lui-meme et proposent des filiations mythiques. Alain-fournier deviendra successivement : "le fils spirituel de peguy", un heros et un martyr, le descendant de gerard de nerval et du romantisme francais, l'ecrivain regionaliste alors qu'il avait mis un point d'honneur a "penser selon soi". En fait, ce vide serait imputable a la meconnaissance de la relation qu'alain-fournier a entretenue avec la litterature anglo-saxonne. Sa connaissance de la langue anglaise, sa presence a londres en 1905, la masse de ses lectures en anglais et tout particulierement des romans d'aventures anglo-saxons sont perceptibles a chaque instant dans son oeuvre. Cependant son desir d'ecrire des romans comme on les ecrit en angleterre va le conduire a vouloir operer une tentative syncretique qui consisterait a faire entrer une aventure anglaise dans un chef-lieu de canton francais. C'est de cette impossibilite meme que naitrait cette puissante nostalgie du divers si caracteristique du grand meaulnes. Et ce n'est pas a la mise en place d'un mythe que l'on assisterait mais a sa destruction. Il en resulte enfin une oeuvre morcelee, sans principe de reference ou l'ideal n'est plus qu'un pseudo-fondement.