Le Combat d’hiver de Jean-Claude Mourlevat : les stéréotypes dans le processus de lecture du récit dystopique pour adolescents

Abstract

Adolescent dystopian literature has been in vogue recently. Its popularity reflects in fact several aspects, from readers’ preferences, through marketing rules, to writers’ choices. The predominance and reiteration of dystopian fiction suggests that they can involve stereotypes. Taking into consideration the fact that the stereotype is a reading construction, we analyse in this paper the role of stereotypes in perceiving and decoding a dystopian universe, with its elements, such as prison environment, oppressive authorities, tentative of revolt, and final victory or defeat, with respect of his young readers, in Jean-Claude Mourlevat’s novel Le Combat d’hiver.