Building narrative huts, reading in the active voice in secondary school

Abstract

In her book Croire aux fauves, Nastassja Martin recounts her encounter with the wild world. This initiatory tale is part of what Jean-Christophe Cavallin, in his climatic map of literature, has called the pole of otherness. There are a number of advantages to offering it as a cursive reading to secondary school pupils, since as well as being an autobiographical story, a genre favoured by teenagers, it can help to transform their representations. In this article, we will first show that the reader is confronted with a narrative that imposes a triple displacement: geographical, anthropological and ontological. We will then consider the ways in which readers can become part of an ecocritical literary transmission. Finally, we will look at the possibility of constructing narrative huts, textual shelters as well as places capable of housing the beginnings of a new literary and ecological paradigm.