Le clézio’s children: intertextuality and writing in mondo et autres histoires

In J.M.G. Le Clézio’s Mondo et histoires (1978), the child is most frequently viewed by critics as a symbol of marginality whose innocence and sincerity expose the hypocrisy and artificiality of urban consumer society. I will argue that Le Clézio goes beyond establishing children as simply one side of a dialectical opposition between the modern world and primitive sincerity. The child additionally stands as a symbol of what modernity is missing, offering an antidote to the sterility of the urban jungle. In Mondo et autres histoires, children are symbols of myth and of writing, symbolic of what the modern, industrialized world lacks.