THE NOVELS OF MICHEL TOURNIER

Michel Tournier, a major contemporary French novelist, has written four novels since 1967: Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des Aulnes, Les Meteores, and Gaspard, Melchior, & Balthazar. To date, there has been no general study of Tournier's major fiction; therefore, the present dissertation is written in an effort to introduce Tournier's novels to an English speaking audience. Divided into four chapters, each chapter a detailed investigation of an individual novel, this study analyzes the subject, themes, and symbols that Tournier has used to create his fictional world.; Tournier, a philosopher turned novelist, has created, piece by piece, novel by novel, a unique philosophical and mythological universe. His novels, classical in form, tell a story using conventional narrative techniques reminiscent of nineteenth century writers such as Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. However, unlike these earlier masters, Tournier's encyclopedic knowledge of history, myth, and religion combines to create a fictional universe that challenges many assumptions of the modern world.; Tournier's primary concern is with alienated modern man and the world that has alienated him. His first novel, Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique, reflects his interest in the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. It retells the story of Robinson Crusoe, an alienated Everyman who discovers that when the system of human relationships disappears, man, through his imagination, can transcend the need for those old relationships by creating a new relationship with the universe itself. In Le Roi des Aulnes, Abel Tiffauges, another alienated Everyman, is endowed with the characteristics of an ogre--the effect of original sin. Half man, half monster, he wanders through the ogreish underworld of Nazi Germany, finally understanding the nature of the nightmare. History and fairy-tale combine in a manner that allows Tiffauges, like a phoenix, to rise out of the apocalyptic fires and redeem himself. The symbol of the Double pervades Les Meteores, an investigation of modern love relationships as both the cause and the effect of man's alienation. The separation of the twins Jean and Paul and the eventual rebirth of Paul as a Janus Bifrons, two men in one, describes Tournier's vision of the new man. Although the last novel, Gaspard, Melchior, & Balthazar, seems to be thematically unrelated to the other three novels, it is, in fact, a catalytic work which makes possible an understanding of the amalgamation of Christian and pagan symbols that Tournier has aimed at in his earlier works.