1. De l'errant à l'artiste — Le Rayonnement d'Ulysse dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Jean Giono
- Author
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Ivier, Marica and Ivier, Marica
- Abstract
This thesis in a tripartite disposition is intended to analyse and synthesize conscious and unconscious reminiscences of reading Homer in Jean Giono’s works, especially the figure of Odysseus polutropos or polumècanos, and to elucidate how the modern author through his characters regenerates this topos. Despite the fact that these two authors sprang from, in time and space, remotely situated places in the Mediterranean soil, the agrarian and manufacturing societies to which they belonged had many similarities. But, at a distance of thirty centuries, the comparison would seem risky if, in these two cases, the account did not intervene after a major conflict (The Trojan War and The First World War respectively) that changed the course of history. This form of ”logos meta polémon”, exposing real and fictional exploits, imposed itself upon the minds of those who survived the cataclysm. Following Giono in his real and imaginary wanderings, this study is intended to show how the circularity of thought interweaves with the aspiration to discover new horizons. Impetus, or the enthusiasm for treading on new grounds, harmonizes with the myth of circumnavigation, where the author with his characters, being a prey to distrust or in the grip of Gorgon, is in search of his self. Assuming different aspects of Odysseus´s personality, and adopting his attitudes, Giono’s vagabonds attempt to measure the world in order to survive. The study embraces the accommodation between the myth and the truth, the latter considered as the “deeper truth” that mythopoeic fictions often embody. Odysseus’s skill in giving verisimilitude to his falsehood is shown in the wanderers’ constant laborious struggle to obtain pitance, everyday existence. In this art of survival, the cunning (dólos) and the reasoning (logos), led by the mètis (the stratagem of intelligence), influence the action and the structure of the novel. The chapter that treats of poïésis undertakes to intertwine the composition of the i
- Published
- 2008