Plenitude restored or trompe l'oeil : the problematic of fragmentation and integration in the prose works of Pierre Jean Jouve and Michel Tournier

Although Pierre Jean Jouve's first novel, Paulina 1880, was published in 1925 while Michel Tournier's first novel, Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique, did not appear until 1967, a painful sense of fragmentation and loss of original plenitude haunts the works of both authors. In this study we shall focus on the psychological fragmentation related to sexuality and sex roles within the prose of Michel Tournier and Pierre Jean Jouve. We shall explore this phenomenon vis-à-vis the Jouvian heterosexual female (chapter one); the Tournierian heterosexual female (chapter two); the Tournierian and Jouvian gay and bisexual female (chapter three); the Tournierian and Jouvian gay and bisexual male (chapter four); the Jouvian heterosexual male (chapter five); and the Tournierian heterosexual male (chapter six). As our chapter seven will point out, it is Tournier's and Jouve's androgynous figure who ostensibly corrects the painful fragmentation inflicted by the Fall. But our final chapter will take issue with the overwhelmingly positive reception generally accorded to this androgyne. In keeping with Julia Kristeva's Histoires d'amour, we shall question the elevation of the biologically male androgyne - an issue heretofore untreated by critics of Pierre Jean Jouve and Michel Tournier.