Images Of Children In Le Clézio’s Works

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio whose literary work is marked by curiosity for cultures from around the world.Indeed,there are two major periods in his writing career.First,he explored themes like insanity,language and writing.And then,perhaps because of a long stay in Panama with the Indians,his vision of the world has changed and the themes of happiness,travel or the diversity of the people are notably present in his works.Mondo and other stories is often regarded as the symbol of this transformation,with the abundant presence of children.It is the young protagonists who spread all over the short stories and the novels that arouse our interest.In fact,the author’s attention to minority civilization,to socially excluded and marginal populations has been noticed by many critics.However,researchers haven’t attached enough importance to lancing an independant study to this particular type of character.Our study focuses on Le Clézio’s children characters and the author himself.We managed to identify these children,provide a complete profile of them,explore the essential elements in the construction of a children’s world,and look behind the childish images to capture the humanist concern of the author.We mainly adopted the method of textual analysis,which requires a careful reading to find the most relevant evidence.We also turned to the reader theories proposed by Jean Perrot and the concept of“defamiliarization" proposed by Russian formalists to interpret essential elements in the construction of the children’s world.By returning to the latin origine of the word,we succeeded in discovering an ambitious desire of Le Clézio and thus having a bettre understanding of this particular writer.In order to provide a profile of Le Clézio’s children,we focused on three aspects:their life situation in family,school and society,their area of competence and their vision of the world.Following a general reading of the limited works in this study,we found that they have many qualities in common: marginal,porous and clairvoyant.Besides,we took a close look at Le Clézio’s constructional art.We focused on essential elements in the construction process: story-telling,children’s sight and the thin border between the real and the marvelous.The young characters have a taste for stories and contemplation.Thanks to these daily activities of children,Le Clézio manages to fill the children’s place with imagination,creation and surprises.In addition,diverging from a piece of news that may probably happen near us,the author builds the children’s world by delicately mixing the real and the unreal.What’s more,our attention was shifted to behind the scenes in order to find out reasons why the author chose to populate his stories with young characters.We noted,through the similitude of young Le Clézio and his young characters,a certain yearning of childhood which constitutes an inexhaustible source of creation,the attention to the destiny of the children of the world and more broadly,of all infans-Greek origin of the word "child".Le Clézio engages in his writing,hoping to let heard the voices of all the voiceless,and bring out on the stage all the figures that are being ignored and even becoming invisible in modern society.