MYTHE ET IMAGE DANS LA GOUTTE D’OR DE MICHEL TOURNIER
MYTH AND IMAGE IN TOURNIER’ s LA GOUTTE D’OR

Summary/Abstract: Michel Tournier’s originality consists in re-writing and re-interpretation the great myths of humanity. He’s concerned with “a bricolage” of myths whose initial meaning he re-interprets in an idiosyncratic manner in his work. He also gives to his mythological novels a dimension of reality which makes them an instrument of knowledge. In «La Goutte d’or», Tournier uses the Roman myth of «bulla aurea» that he opposes to that of the modern image of the Occident. In fact, as he says, the novel shows the meeting of two cultures: the Islam which values the sign and the Occident which cultivates the visual. Our article intends to focus upon some aspects of this myth and on the different « facettes » of the image which mark the heroes’s trajectory in France. In effect, one can speak of conflict of values between the mythical space of the desert and the modern western world.

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