Walking as a learning route in youth and children's literature

the example of Jean Giono's Le petit garçon qui avait envie d'espace

Abstract

This article proposes to analyze the function of land and aerial walking in Le petit garçon qui avait envie d'espace by Jean Giono. Crucial and constantly present throughout the story, the walking pattern will give us the possibility to wonder where the story leads the young hero but also his adult alter ego: Giono himself. Our study will be essentially stylistic. As far as the methodology is concerned, we are mainly indebted, to a large extent, to the poetics of Gaston Bachelard, who takes the form of reading and writing-walking and produces dynamic reflection. Thus, the study of the chosen text will also refer to other works by Giono such as Jean Le Bleu and Le voyageur immobile and to those of other youth literature writers such as Lewis Carroll. Building series by the game of neighborhoods and echoes, we will try to approach Giono's fascination with the bush routes, the great outdoors and the airways, necessarily initiatory, which lead to them.