De la promenade comme itinéraire d'apprentissage en littérature de jeunesse

This article proposes to analyze the function of land and aerial walking in Le petit garçon qui avait envie d'espace by Jean Giono. Crucial and constantly present throughout the story, the walking pattern will give us the possibility to wonder where the story leads the young hero but also his adult alter ego: Giono himself. Our study will be essentially stylistic. As far as the methodology is concerned, we are mainly indebted, to a large extent, to the poetics of Gaston Bachelard, who takes the form of reading and writing-walking and produces dynamic reflection. Thus, the study of the chosen text will also refer to other works by Giono such as Jean Le Bleu and Le voyageur immobile and to those of other youth literature writers such as Lewis Carroll. Building series by the game of neighborhoods and echoes, we will try to approach Giono's fascination with the bush routes, the great outdoors and the airways, necessarily initiatory, which lead to them. Cet article se propose d'étudier la fonction de la promenade terrestre et aérienne dans Le petit garçon qui avait envie d'espace de Jean Giono. Centrale et présente tout au long du récit, nous nous demanderons notamment où elle conduit le jeune héros mais aussi son double adulte : Giono lui-même. Notre étude passera d'abord par une analyse stylistique du récit de l'auteur. En ce qui concerne la méthodologie, nous tenterons de nous départir d'une démarche tenant à la fois de la lecture et de l'écriture-promenade, productrice de réflexion dynamique. Ainsi, l'étude du texte choisi se fera aussi en référence à d'autres œuvres de Giono et à celles d'autres auteurs ayant écrit à destination de la jeunesse. En construisant des séries par le jeu des voisinages et des échos, nous tâcherons d'approcher la fascination de Giono pour les itinéraires buissonniers, les grands espaces et les voies aériennes, forcément initiatiques, qui y conduisent.

The expressional style of the novel by Jean Giono «Big flock»

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the stylistic peculiarities of the novel of the French writer Jean Giono «Big Flock» (1931) dedicated to the events of World War I. The article proposes to use the Gaston Bashlar’s conception «The Poetics of Fire» as a methodology for the research of the expressive style. In the French criticism there is an idea about stylistic sophistication of this work, which is defined as a model of the tragic naturalism. It is suggested to look at the style of this work from the point of view of the poetics of expressionism. It is shown that the work of J. Giono is an example of «the ardent language», which contains the bright «The Poetics of Fire» and many other means of expressionist style. The novel «Big Flock» is called an amazing work of world literature on the endlessly elaborated theme of the war 1914. According to the French criticism, the novel is written in the spirit of the tragic naturalism. In a novel hatred for a civilization that has shed so much blood is expressed with utmost power. We intend to prove the consistently expressionistic nature of this work. If we use Gaston Bashlar's concept of «Poetics of Fire» as a methodology to identify the expressionist style, it is precisely the dominant archetype of fire that will enable to move the novel by J. Giono on a style scale from tragic naturalism to expressionism. G. Bashlar is a distinguished French philosopher, cultural scientist, literary scholar of the 20th century who explores dreams, in particular the creative dream described in his work «Psychoanalysis of Fire», which examines the images inspired by the contemplation of the fire. Also in this work, the philosopher identifies specific psychological complexes that allow deeper understanding of poetic works. All the manifestations of the fire G. Bashlar connects with the creative process. The main features of the poetics of expressionism in the novel of J. Giono «Big Flock» are as follows: the active use of the fire image that makes the work an example of «The Poetics of Fire» written by Gaston Bashlyar; the fragmentation of the plot; the inciting of the naturalistic pictures of mutilation and the death; the schematized character-images, the descriptions of human appearance compared to animals; the hyperbolization of every language means; the richness of the multiple tropes, the pervasive allegory of the «great flock», which enables to bring the generalizations to the scale of all humanity, to equalize the human and the animal world as an object of destruction, etc. Apparently, there is no expressionist means that wouldn’t manifest itself in this novel.