Les loups et les ours : une histoire d’amour difficile

Abstract

This is the story of two women, two young writers who wanted to pay tribute to two species loved, admired, appreciated, and even venerated, but also fought, hated and demonized since the beginning of time: the pianist Hélène Grimaud and the philosopher Charlotte Bousquet. Through their works (Variations Sauvages and Le dernier ours) we will better understand the love these two writers feel for these two emblematic species. Our aim will therefore be the ecocritical analysis of these two books, which are very different from each other, but in which animal sensitivity, ecological awareness and the familiar beauty of interspecies relations are very much present. The first one is an autobiography that tells us about the trajectory of a singular artist whose life was transformed by the meeting of a she-wolf named “Alawa.” The second one is a novel of anticipation that offers us a somewhat pessimistic and frightening vision of our future and that of endangered species. Two beautiful and dangerous adventures that prove to us that, in the real world or in fiction, the love we feel for an animal can move mountains.

Keywords

• ecocriticism
• Hélène Grimaud
• Charlotte Bousquet
• francophone literature
• animal love