If not by nature, then by habit, people tend to match one thing with another-man and woman, laughter and tears, sickness and health, fire and water, master and servant-thereby accentuating similarities and contrasts and opening a field of relations. InThe Mirror of Ideas, Michel Tournier examines these pairs and a host of others to demonstrate how pairing one object or idea with another generates the work of imagination, philosophy, and creative thinking of all kinds. Tournier treats pairs both lowly and exalted-moving from fork and spoon, horse and bull, cat and dog, to fear and anguish,...

Michel Tournier, member of the Acadimie Goncourt and one of the most influential French writers of the post-Nouveau roman period, stresses the crucial interrelationship that exists between myth and literature. It is the writer's duty, he states, to keep myths alive by continually renewing and transforming them, re-releasing them in an ever changing social context. Written in French, this study considers the Tournier novel as the story of a voyage in a literal and figurative sense. Jonathan Krell uses the term elementary to characterize this voyage through the universe of Tournier's...