Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes: novelistic adventure and poetry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present some characteristics of Le Grand Meaulnes’s (1913) poetic language by Alain-Fournier (1886-1914). In fact, this book delimits an important period in the crisis of the French novel because, from the middle of the nineteen century, French literature sees, on one hand, the triumph of the realistic and naturalist novel, with the representative names of Flaubert, Balzac and Zola and, on the other, there is the emergence of a new poetic language, which is concentrated, imagistic and suggestive. Thus, Fournier’s adventure of the novel, published in 1913, on the La Nouvelle revue Française and, latter, edited by Emile-Paul, results from this period of changes and manages, without renouncing poetry, to fi nd again the novelistic character, stablishing the beginning of a new age when poetry invades the novel and transfi gures its everyday reality. Keywords: Alain-Fournier. Le Grand Meaulnes. Novel. Poetic short story. Poetry.