Au cœur ténébreux d’une éco-randonnée littéraire entre la Laponie et la Tasmanie : Oiseau de Malheur de Johanna Sinisalo

• Main Author: T. Tuhkunen
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: French
• Published: Presses Universitaires de Rennes (PUR)
• Subjects: Laponie
• Online Access: http://okina.univ-angers.fr/publications/ua13953

This article seeks to shed light on the ecological issues underlying the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo's novel Linnunaivot / Oiseau de malheur (translated into English as Birdbrain) published in Finland in 2008, translated into several languages. After a brief overview of her other main novels, also marked by environmental issues and preoccupations, the essay focuses on the topical places of this Nordic eco-novel, more particularly on its narrative structure, presented in the form of a hiking tour rooted in the landscape and culture of Finland, yet pursued in such a way as to tackle a number of ecological issues since Australia and Tasmania. The alternating narration between two (human) narrators is enriched by the presence of a third one, a trickster bird whose mediation at once complicates and facilitates the understanding of this eco-tale which resonates with two 19th-century intertexts, Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, and Edgar Allan Poe's poem « The Raven » .