la notion du désert dans la pensée de jean-marie gustave le clézio et antoine de saint-exupéry dans désert, la terre des hommes et le petit prince

apart from other aspects, desert is a natural environment and is one of the appealing terrestrial elements. putting its symbolic and fictional senses aside, the term “desert” bears mystic sense more than material sense. in addition to the worlds materialistic experiences, desert has attracted the attention of writers because it creates a kind of inner experience, which returns the individual into its true origin. both antoine de saint-exupéry and jean-marie gustave le clézio have complicated and varied experiences of desert. in his contemporary, saint-exupéry tried to take the adventurous and dual responsibility of a pilot and a ethical writer with humanitarian inspirations. le clézio experienced similar adventures around the valley of “saghi al-hamrae” of morocco, where saint-exupéry explained events in “lo rio de oro”. in fact, both of them were after divine cognition which was latent in the deserts sands. the present thesis consists of three chapters. in chapter one, the concept of classical elements (water, fire, wind, and soil), their application in these writers works, and their reflection in the protagonists of their stories are considered. the concept of desert and the significance of this vast and mysterious land as the intellectual foundation of these two writers have been examined in chapter two. in the last chapter, we examined the nature of nomadic characters who are not settlers and are always in continual seek of truth and the promised land. finally, we conclude that these writers consider desert as a sublime place and its vastness, silence, and freedom is a scale to compare one’s own depth and meaning of life with it.