Thélème. Revista Complutense de Estudios Franceses Vol 29, Núm. 1 (2014) 173-198 174 The Specular Construction of the Self through Fiction in Michel Tournier’s “Que ma joie demeure”

Abstract

Thematically omnipresent, the specular construction of identity plays a key role as a structural device in Michel Tournier’s works. The permanent dialogue between opposites, together with a multi-layered referential system, constantly obliges us to redefine the generic status of his texts. This paper analyses this issue in “Que ma joie demeure” (1978), published a few months later than Le Vent Paraclet, the only “autobiographical” text by the author. By taking as a reference the clown character and the dynamics of the circus show, and following Walter Benjamin’s concepts of Erlebnis and Erfahrung, we propose two possible and complementary readings of the tale. Both of them focus on the triple procedure of inversion, mythification and appropriation, used by Tournier to question the constitutive unit of the individual and to blur the limits between (auto)biography and fiction.