earticle

영어

This study explores Marguerite Yourcenar’s early works L’homme couvert de dieux (1926) and Denier du rêve(1934) through the lens of political thought. Both texts, though differing in form and tone, employ historical and mythological allegory to reflect on the nature of totalitarian power and the conditions of human existence. Rather than making direct ideological statements, Yourcenar encodes political critique in symbolic figures and aesthetic structures. While Denier du rêve has often been studied in isolation for its political implications, this research considers it alongside L’homme couvert de dieux, first published in the communist newspaper L’Humanité. The comparative approach highlights a more nuanced ideological trajectory. In L’homme couvert de dieux, the protagonist's submission to artificial gods suggests the dangers of blind devotion and sacrificial ignorance. In Denier du rêve, the symbolic exchange of dream and silver coin exposes the commodification of subjectivity under authoritarian regimes. Figures such as ‘the Duce’ and ‘Caesar’ symbolize a power structure sustained by invisible violence and recurring indifference. This study argues that Yourcenar’s political poetics operates through indirect, allegorical means situating her within a broader 1930s literary context where writers often addressed political crisis through oblique and aesthetic strategies. By reassessing these two works together, this article repositions Yourcenar not as a politically neutral author but as one experimenting with form to critique power and complicity. This perspective also opens the way for comparative studies of other ideologically ambiguous writers of the twentieth century.