Alain-Fournier's le Grand Meaulnes Multifaceted Novel

Abstract

Those who intend to study Alain-Fournier’s novel can choose from a broad set of approaches to do so. Marthe Robert quite rightly stressed that the reader is confronted with a fake reality, the product of an artist’s imagination and not his / her autobiography. And Sartre once stated that early childhood was a fruitful starting point to analyze a novelist’s message. Memories of that period may influence an author, who may even take it as an ideal, as did Fournier. But art is not that straightforward. Le Grand Meaulnes should be seen as the author’s literary image of beauty (childhood, nature, journeys, women and love). We could therefore see the novel as a young man’s piece of art about life and teenagers problems or concerns.The true value of the novel hides under the surface of narrative simplicity. It offers a new way of expressing the charms of childhood, the problems of growing up and of giving up ones dreams. The novel offers many ways to express everybody’s problems. But one needs to know the rules governing this world of imagination and reverie and put aside the poetic magic in order to find out what lies under the surface.The novel can be studied from various perspectives and, in this essay, we present ours.