Michel Tournier and the Metaphor of Fiction

Michel Tournier is France's most widely acclaimed living novelist, a writer who explores complex philosophical questions in the guise of concrete, imagistic narratives. His texts demand academic scrutiny, but Tournier also actively encourages a different form of reception. His habit of performing abridged versions of his stories before a 'live' (frequently young) audience explicitly links his work to the oral tradition of the storyteller. Tournier's project therefore solicits a holistic rather than deconstructive approach on the part of the reader, in which the representative value of each singular text rather than interconnections within the oeuvre becomes the primary focus of critical attention.
This comprehensive study of Tournier's fiction privileges the notion of literary reference, by which the world of text is understood or experienced in metaphorical relation to the world outside of it. This book elucidates an aesthetic of Tournier's fiction that encompasses the writer's stated ambition to 'go beyond literature'.