French & Italian Language & Literature. (Abstracts-2003 Annual Meetings)‪.‬

Medieval Motifs and Contemporary Narrative Structures in van Cauwelaert's L'Education d'une fee. Molly Lynde-Recchia, Western Michigan University, Foreign Languages & Literatures, 518 Sprau Tower, Kalamazoo, MI 49008 The setting of Didier van Cauwelaert's novel L'Education d'une fee (2002) is contemporary. However, two of his major characters recall traditional folk motifs (the fairy in the wood and the wounded protagonist seeking wholeness, respectively), and Cauwelaert's use of these themes is reminiscent of Marie de France's exploitation of them in her lai "Guigemar" (twelfth century). But the couple formed here by the protagonist and the fairy is only one of three couples central to the novel, the other two being his marriage and his father-son rapport with his stepson. Cauwelaert complicates this scenario by his playful narrative approach, in which two different characters use a first-person voice. This technique involves the reader in the creation of a dualistic point of view and in an alternating couple relationship with each narrator. The multiplicity of possible viewpoints problematizes in midstream the conventional couple formed by reader and narrator, which the work sets up carefully at its outset and emphasize s by its traditional theme. Ultimately, Cauwelaert's novel blends folk motifs and contemporary narrative structures to create an original tale of wounds and healing.