ECOLOGY AND THE FANTASTIC. THE EXAMPLE OF LE MONDE ENFIN BY JEAN-PIERRE ANDREVON1

This article analyzes Le monde enfin by the French writer Jean-Pierre Andrevon as an example of the relation between the new fantastic and ecology. Adopting canonical fantastic theories as a point of reference, it presents the development of the new fantastic as a genre and Andrevon’s important place in this literary field. Thereafter, it examines the narrative roles of humans and nature in Le Monde enfin in order to demonstrate how the author plays with the conventional definitions of the character and the malevolent phenomenon. As the study strives to prove, Andrevon’s ecological preoccupations strongly influence his literary work. Moreover, the article evokes intertextual references in Le Monde enfin and examines the text in relation to philosophical concepts such as deep ecology and the Gaia hypothesis.

R 1. the fantastic and the new fantastic: essential terminoloGical definitions Since the fantastic 2 is one of the key concepts of this article, it is first and foremost necessary to broadly address its definition and its historical evolution. Several contemporary critics, such as Roger Caillois, Louis Vax, Tzvetan Todorov, Joel Malrieu 3 (to enumerate the best known), have been trying to establish the boundaries of the genre in question. Their critical approaches, different as they are, do have certain common points. Firstly, all theorists postulate that a real framework is absolutely essential for the fantastic effect to occur. Secondly, specialists of the genre highlight the importance of the malevolent phenomenon (otherwise called the disruptive element), the intrusion of which into the real framework constitutes a shock, a scandal, a disruption of the laws When Andrevon evokes the golden era of the fantastic literature in the nineteenth century, he also compares the genre in question to dusty Gothic cathedrals, due to its overly schematic nature. As Andrevon argues: «Revenants, fantômes, zombie, apparitions/disparitions merveilleuses ou maléfiques: tels sont les archétypes de cette littérature fantastique qui eut qualitativement et quantitativement son apogée au xixe siècle, avec ce qu'on appelle le gothique, et qui ressemble aux cathédrales du même style, pareillement boursouflé, pareillement, poussiéreux» (1980: 7). According to Andrevon, the twentieth century brings a crucial change, as the admiration for the advancement of science results in the hegemony of a new genre: science fiction. As he observes: «Le fantastique disparaît pour faire place à la science-fiction. C'est que la science explique tout » (1980: 8). However, the nineteen-seventies mark the disappointment with science and its limitations, which entails the rejection of science fiction and the return of the fantastic. Nonetheless, it is a new kind of the fantastic, which fulfils the needs of contemporary readers. As Andrevon summarizes: «Années 70. La matière est rétive, l'atome ne nous ouvre pas de verts paradis (...), l'espace est trop vaste (...). Et le temps, surtout, se dérobe (...). La science-fiction devient science-catastrophe. (...) Alors on fait un grand pas en arrière, on revient à la case départ. Au fantastique. (...) Un fantastique qu'on peut appeler fantastique moderne, pour bien marquer nos distances avec l'autre, l'ancien » (1980: 8-9).
Characterizing the new fantastic, Andrevon emphasizes the importance of the real; however, this factor cannot be reduced to a realistic background intended to make the intrusion of the supernatural phenomenon believable, as is the case with the canonical fantastic. The new fantastic must happen hic et nunc, here and now, so that the reader feels the close presence of the threat: «On n'a plus de futur (visible). Mais on a un présent, riche en strates d'horreurs obscures à explorer » (1980: 9). The real aspect of the new fantastic must be characterized by banality, triviality, commonness, and it is this «familière étrangeté» (Afeissa, 2014) of the world that becomes the source of modern horror. 6 This «insolite quotidien» (1980: 9) «sait se glisser dans les décors les plus plats, les plus gris, les plus banalement désespérants : ceux dans lesquels on vit, mais que notre oeil traverse tant sont translucides leurs architectures» (1980: 120), such as a garage, a junkyard, the subway, a large office, a railway station, a hotel, a cinema, a modern building, and «plus généralement ces grandes villes bâties comme autant de labyrinthes» (1980: 12). This marks one of the basic differences between the canonical and the new fantastic. It is worth mentioning that in nineteenth-century novellas, the role of the real -le réel-was often reduced to a few sentences in the incipit, in order to establish the spatiotemporal framework, whereas in the new fantastic, the banal, everyday reality is all-pervasive and virtually becomes a fullfledged hero of the text.
It is not only the structure and function of the real that change in the neo-fantastic. Andrevon also notes some changes to the disruptive element. The writer rejects the traditional phenomenon, which he finds too conventional for the modern reader, as it is always linked to a naive and oversimplified kind of supernatural. This means the absence of motifs such as a phantom or a vampire (alternatively, they can appear, but in a new way, without inducing anxiety). Andrevon proposes that the new phenomenon should stem directly from the anxiety-provoking contemporary reality, which also emphasizes the role of the real in the new fantastic. As examples of this type of phenomenon, the writer mentions: inner emptiness experienced by the modern man, exploration of the depths of his psyche, 7 his troubled mind, 8 life in the time of cataclysms (such as ecological -the myth of the last man and the all-powerful, frightening nature, 9 historical -wars, genocide, totalitarianism, social -overpopulation and its opposite: the extinction of the human race), the pessimistic topic of «no future » (1980: 8-9). It is easy to notice that 7 As Andrevon observes in one of his interviews about the internalization of the new fantastic: «la S-F c'est Marx et (...) le fantastique c'est Freud ! Ce dernier procède de peurs beaucoup plus intérieures qui viennent souvent de l'enfance : la peur du noir, de la maladie, de la perte de ses parents ; tout ce qui nourrit la petite bête gluante qui est en chacun de nous. Ce qui est intéressant pour un auteur, c'est de faire sortir ses peurs de lui et de les communiquer à ses lecteurs» (Comballot, 2013). 8 Obviously, this Andrevonian postulate is not entirely new, as in the nineteenth century there existed the clinical fantastic, which inspired itself with the human mind as a source of horror (as visible in some texts by Téophile Gautier, August de Villers de l'Isle-Adam, Barbey d'Aurevilly and Guy de Maupassant). Nevertheless, there are certain differences in the implementation of the classic and the new clinical fantastic. In the nineteenth century, the clinical fantastic often exposed the influence of external factors, such as drugs, alcohol, paranormal phenomena (telepathy, mesmerism), on the human mind. Madness was usually referred to directly, explicitly classified as a mental illness (in medical terms). On the contrary, in the new fantastic, madness is not usually a result of external factors. It appears out of nowhere, affecting not only individuals, but also larger social groups (collective psychosis). In the same way, the disturbing behaviour of the characters is not explicitly defined as a mental illness, a psychosis or a neurosis. The reader is confronted with peculiar, anxiety-provoking acts and left to interpret them as a potential mental illness. The classic short story which perfectly illustrates the clinical new fantastic is Andrevon's «Ici», from the collection Paysages de Mort (1978). It describes the profoundly lonely existence of a man who never leaves his house and obsessively repeats the same rituals every day. The story is virtually a textbook example of obsessive-compulsive disorder and agoraphobia, but it is left for the reader to identify and interpret: therefore, unlike in the classic fantastic, the cause of the character's uncanny actions remains unknown and becomes in itself a source of hesitation. n the everyday life. rspective, ion) onist and the phenomenon, the ture, such as: concentrates on examining this particular nov 9 Cf. Estok & Sivaramakrishnan (2014). some subjects have been acquired from science fiction or dystopia: consequently, the new fantastic appears porous as a genre.
In his preface, Andrevon evokes the names of a few, mostly English-speaking writers (King, Herbert, Masterton) who, in his opinion, implement their own visions of the new fantastic and can become examples for French-speaking authors to follow. 10 He also recommends taking inspiration from horror cinema, 11 as transmedia relations can help to enrich the new fantastic.
In summary, the writer intends to use the term «new fantastic» in the broadest possible sense (closer to the anglophone concepts 12 and relatively far from certain restrictive French theories), 13 emphasizing the hybridity and transmediality of the genre in question.
2. the new fantastic enGaGed in the «here and now» -ecoloGy in the new fantastic Andrevon himself strives to implement the aforementioned theoretical postulates in his work. As he has been interested in ecology for years, ecological commitment is of the utmost importance in his writing. He comments on his environmental concerns as follows: «Je voulais mettre en forme mes préoccupations écologiques, préoccupations qui m'angoissent et qui devraient angoisser la totalité des habitants de cette planète s'ils veulent survivre» (Comballot, 2013); «On écrit sur ce qui nous motive, sur ce qui nous effraie aussi, et pour ma part, c'est plutôt l'avenir très proche de notre pauvre planète Terre, sous l'angle de la dégradation de l'environnement, de la pollution, de l'effet de serre. Vous savez, ce n'est pas une posture. Je suis vraiment pour l'extinction de l'humanité...La nature saccagée est une douleur permanente et je me suis préoccupé d'écologie dès le début des années 1970, en participant notamment à la première revue du genre en France : La Gueule ouverte» (Sabourdy, 2014); 10 Andrevon does not hide his admiration for Stephen King. In his work, one can find several intertextual allusions to King's texts. Andrevon is also called «The French Stephen King». 11 The Exorcist, The Omen, Jaws, Star Wars, Superman. 12 Cf. Bozzetto & Huftier (2004). 13 For example, Andrevon's concept is far from one of the most restrictive definitions of the fantastic, conceived by Tzetan Todorov. According to the latter, the essence of the fantastic lies in the hesitation between the supernatural interpretation (convincing, but incompatible with reality) and the realistic interpretation of the described events (1970: 29). Thus, Andrevon's concept of the new fantastic hearkens back to the beginnings of the genre, when witers (E.T.A. Hoffmann, Charles Nodier) and critics (Jean-Jacques Ampère, Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne) opted for a transgeneric, broad vision of the genre in question. «L'écologie et tout ce qui touche à la survie de la Terre, hélas bien malmenée, me semblent importants et suscitent des sujets d'histoires» (Comballot, 2013). Thus, by uniting ecology with the fantastic, the writer implements his postulate of a «here and now» genre, inspired par excellence by everyday life, by the «familiar strangeness» of the contemporary world in the shadow of a catastrophe caused by climate change and the collapse of ecosystems. This paper presents the accomplishment of this postulate in one of the most famous Andrevon's novels: Le Monde enfin, 14 which Andrevon himself refers to as his oeuvre maîtresse -masterpiece-outlining all his ecological concerns. 15 Speaking of ecology, it is crucial to mention two antithetical philosophical approaches that define the relations between nature and humans and give rise to two branches of ecologism. Andrevon is a proponent of one of them, namely the second one.
The first approach, which can be called anthropocentric or humanist, dates from Protagoras's philosophy and is later developed in the works of Descartes and Kant. It claims that man is the master and possessor of nature, which remains inferior to him, because animals are beings devoid of reason, hence worthless. Man needs to control nature, created by God as disordered. As a powerful subject, man is the only one capable of organizing and governing nature, which can also be achieved using technology and science. The aforementioned advocates of this approach articulate the absolute value of the human being in relation to the world and to nature.
These philosophical ideas influence a branch of ecologism called «H» (humanist) ecologism. The movement in question perceives nature as an asset that needs to be protected in the name of the survival of humanity: safeguard-ing natural resources and meeting human needs are the purpose of this branch of ecology, also referred to as «superficial» ecology.
The second vision, opposed to the first one and based on Spinoza's and Darwin's philosophy, argues that man does not occupy a privileged position in nature: he is only a fragment of the world and a natural being despite his «cultural» gestures and air of civility. Thus, one day the human race may become extinct in the process of evolution and the indifferent nature may continue to blossom without people. 16 This second concept is at the origin of «non-H» or «non-A» (non-humanist or non-anthropocentric) ecologism, also known as deep ecology. 17 This branch of ecology asserts that natural beings, namely the already existing non-humans, must be preserved for their own sake, because they are intrinsically and morally valuable. For this reason, rights must be conferred upon them. The most radical ecologists even speak of biospheric egalitarianism or biocentrism, that is to say the equal rights of all biological species, including humans.
Undoubtedly, Andrevon is a proponent of deep ecology and sometimes takes an even more radical stance by saying that in order to preserve nature, humans must consciously and voluntarily submit to the extinction of their species. These ideas reappear in his novel Le Monde enfin. This long text narrates a solitary journey of one of the last men on Earth, which changes com-16 Darwin's theory inspired several fantastic narratives that tackle the theme of the human race extinction and the appearance of man's successor: a superior being, sometimes of extraterrestrial origin. Some examples of the narratives include: Letter from a Madman, The Horla (the first and second version) by Guy de Maupassant, The Color out of Space, The Outsider, At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. 17 The founder of deep ecology is Arne Naess , and its main representatives are William Fox, Bill Devall, and Georges Sessions. Naess sees deep ecology as a «platform» of exchange and dialog for the pursuit of ecological wisdom, that is, harmony and ecological balance. In «The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. A Summary» (1973) Naess recognizes the need for the realization of the following postulates: 1. Humans are knots in a biospheric net of intrinsic relations. 2. The relations between humans and nature must be based on biospheric egalitarianism. 3. The principle of diversity and symbiosis: diversity increases the potential for survival, development and richness of living beings. The struggle for survival, in the Darwinian sense of the term, must be interpreted as an ability to coexist and cooperate in complex relations. Naess wants to «live and let live». He also argues that the reduction of human population would be good for humans and absolutely necessary for non-humans: «Humankind is the first species on Earth with the intellectual capacity to limit its number consciously and live in an enduring, dynamic equilibrium with other forms of life. Human beings can perceive and care for the diversity of their surroundings» (1990: 23). 4. He criticizes the exploitation of humans by humans and of nature by humans. 5. Humans must fight against pollution and resource depletion from a broader perspective, taking into consideration the aforementioned points. 6. Naess supports autonomy and decentralization of decisions: according to him, we must «think globally, act locally». 7. One should never neglect the political opportunity to propagate deep ecology. pletely after an ecological disaster and a mysterious pandemic that causes the death of most people and the sterility of the few survivors.
In the classic fantastic nature is most often portrayed as the evil, anxiety-provoking phenomenon that persecutes the character, oppresses him, and eventually leads to his downfall. Thus, one observes a rather conventional distribution of narrative roles: on one side, a weak human character; on the other, an all-powerful phenomenon: nature that always triumphs over humans. Sometimes, nature is personified, for example by a god of nature (like the Greek Pan), 18 by a goddess bound to natural forces (e.g. Persephone 19 who returns to Earth for six months every year in order to restore vegetation for spring and then spends the other six months in the underground kingdom with Hades; her mother Demeter -the mother of the Earth, the goddess of agriculture and harvest) 20 or by a demon that originated in nature (like the Wendigo -a spirit of the forest). 21 Without being familiar with Andrevon's environmental concerns, one might be under the impression, especially at the beginning of the novel, that nature is portrayed there in the traditional way, namely that it fulfils the function of the evil phenomenon that crushes and oppresses the human character. After the ecological catastrophe, man loses his superior, anthropocentric position at the top of the hierarchy of beings. This motif, frequent in fantastic literature and in science fiction is known as the end of the Anthropocene: the end of human domination. 22 The last human survivors are mentally and physical- Wendigo character also appears in several television series, comics, role-playing games and video games. 22 From a geological point of view, in the history of the Earth, the Anthropocene -the Age of Manrefers to the geological time that began when human activities achieved a significant impact on all the Earth's ecosystems. In other words, the Anthropocene is the era in which humans became the major geological force, capable of globally modifying their environment. The very term is recent: it was used at the end of the twentieth century by Paul Joseph Crutzen to refer to the new era in the history of the planet. According to Crutzen (2006), the Anthropocene followed the Holocene and began with the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century. The scientist even suggests the specific date of appearance of this new era, namely the year 1784: the date of patenting the steam engine, invented by James Watt, which started the industrial revolution. However, both the definition and the dating of the Anthropocene remain controversial. ly degenerated. In the text in question, they are portrayed as fallen beings, doomed to gradually become extinct. Weak, solitary, immersed in gloom, they embody all the stereotypes of the traditional fantastic character. On the other hand, nature is experiencing remarkable growth, exceptional exuberance. Plants invade the last vestiges of the ancient human civilization: rural areas, villages, towns and roads are colonized by nature: Des broussailles, des ronces avaient poussé partout, rendant abstraites les frontières artificielles longtemps maintenues entre les pâturages et les terrains de culture intensive, pareillement abandonnés. Des maisons, nombreuses parsemaient la vallée. De haut, elles paraissent encore habitées, à cause de leur bon état apparent. Les toits de tuiles, d'ardoise, de tôle ondulée étaient rarement crevés, seulement moussus, d'une mousse grise, sèche, poussiéreuse, friable. Du lierre, de l'ampélopsis, des liserons et autres plantes grimpantes s'étaient déployés sur la plupart des façades, qui se trouvaient ainsi encordées d'un foisonnement robuste de larges feuilles brillantes. Quelques portes avaient jailli de leurs gonds, beaucoup de vitres étaient brisées, des plantes envahissaient les pièces abandonnées, que des animaux petits et grands avaient colonisées (2006: 43); Les routes étaient crevassées, terreuses (...). Des végétaux vivaces avaient poussé dans les fissures du bitume ou du goudron, des chardons, des pissenlits, de la ciguë, du plantain, des ronciers. La N 75 (...) n'était plus un ruban noir et tranchant, seulement une large piste marbrée de vert, qui s'accordait au panorama sans imposer outre mesure sa présence. Les biotopes autrefois morcelés par un réseau routier de plus en plus dense communiquaient de nouveau, dans une harmonique qui retrouvait peu à peu la perméabilité de ses articulations naturelles (2006: 44).
The characteristics and the anxiety-provoking role of plants in Andrevon's novel, especially in its first chapters, seems to be in accordance with the principles of «animal and plant horror», analyzed, among others, by Dawn Keetley. One of the aspects of «plant horror» is the free, unlimited expansion of vegetation and its recolonization of cities, viewed as a kind of vengeance upon the humankind: «We are surrounded by vegetation; when humans falter, vegetation surges in to take our place-creeping over our buildings, pushing up through our roads, taking what we were forced to abandon» ; «Plants menace with their wild, purposeless growth: Plants may not (...) be able to move around, but they can grow-wildly, prodigiously, with a super-reproductively that risks threatening our own capacity to amass more of our species than theirs» (Keetly, 2017). This peculiar, frightening motif of the expansion of nature as a form of revenge on humans is present in the analyzed text. Big cities, like Paris, start to look like tropical forests, plant labyrinths, jungles inhabited by wild and exotic animals: De l'autre côté du fleuve murmurant, le Palais de Justice élevait sa pesante masse grise où des mouchetures vertes, plus envahissantes de jour en jour, mettaient des touches coquettes; (...) le dernier homme dans Paris alla se pencher au-dessus de la Seine qui, pure comme du diamant, roulait sans empressement aucun entre ses frontières de pierre noire. Dérangé par son approche, un alligator nain se souleva sur ses pattes courtaudes, courut étonnamment vite sur quelques mètres, se jeta dans le courant (...). Il [i.e. le dernier homme -K.G., A.S] suivit des yeux, dans la transparence de l'eau, la forme fuselée qui ne tarda pas à disparaître vers l'aval, s'enfonçant dans la masse de végétaux emmêlés qui avaient commencé à se multiplier depuis l'île de la Cité, menaçant de colmater les quais (...). Il trouva les hippopotames plus loin, une famille ayant élu domicile dans le square du Vert-Galant. Le dernier homme dans Paris, alors qu'il passait sous l'ombre tendue du Pont Neuf, les observa un instant à travers la largeur du fleuve. Les hippos piétinaient pesamment les pelouses en friche avant de se jeter de tout leur poids (...) dans le lit de plantes euthropiques dont la couverture se défaisait sous leur masse pour se reformer aussitôt. Les animaux bramaient de plaisir (...). Il croisa un bison solitaire en traversant le Pont Royal majestueux et glacé. (...) Après avoir traversé le quai de Tuileries, où ne rôdait à perte de vue qu'un rhinocéros (...) le dernier homme dans Paris tourna à droite, place du Carrousel, et s'enfonça à travers la brousse haute vers l'angle rentrant du Louvre ; les vitres biseautées de la pyramide s'étaient depuis longtemps fracassées sous le travail acharné des éléments, mais la fine architecture de métal restée debout, servant de perchoir à une nuée de corbeaux hitchcockiens. 23 (2006: 215-216) This strange behavior of nature trying to erase all traces of humans seems to be fully conscious and premeditated: nature takes revenge on man, its former master and possessor. Dawn Keetly argues that whereas nature and plants are often treated as a mere background to people's everyday existence, they are in fact an anxiety-provoking figure of the Other, the unfamiliar, entailing rupture with normality and with everything that we know about the world: «Plants embody an absolute alterity. Plants exist on (and beyond) the outer limits of what we know (and what we have wanted to know): they are the utterly and ineffably strange, embodying an absolute alterity» (2016: 6).
In order to demonstrate that, Andrevon uses the already evoked, traditional fantastic technique, namely the personification of nature. At first, the planet is personified by two anxiety-provoking figures: «a female plant giant, (...) the mother Yeti» and «a female Wendigo» (2006: 229). Let us recall that the Yeti, the abominable snowman, is a cryptid 24 born from the folklore of Nepal, India, Bhutan and Tibet. In popular literature and culture, 25 the Yeti is a savage, all-powerful creature, always hostile towards humans. In Andrevon's texts, the Yeti becomes the Mother Yeti, a snow woman embodying the forces of nature. The second name, the feminine Wendigo (la wendigo), also comes from the masculine form (le wendigo). The Wendigo is a supernatural being, originating from Native North American folklore. This evil creature with a heart of ice is a spirit of the forest and nature. The Wendigo is a giant Native American Manitou, hostile towards humans, because it feeds on human flesh. These two personifications of nature highlight the threat it constitutes to people, as well as its omnipotence, which contrasts with human weakness.
Later in the novel, in order to personify nature, the writer resorts to the «Gaia hypothesis» developed in 1970 by the English ecologist James Lovelock. 26 Lovelock uses the name of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth, to represent the Earth 27 that he sees as a living being, an intelligent super organism that self-regulates in order to preserve life by means of the Gaia principles: all the hypothetical constraints which make it possible to preserve the stability of the biosphere, the equilibrium and the maintenance of life. The violation of these laws by Gaia's inhabitants causes destabilization, degradation or death of the ecosystem. Thus, Gaia can defend herself against the destructive activity of her inhabitants by eliminating them. In the Andrevonian novel, Gaia 28 con-24 A cryptid is a creature that is believed to exist without any scientific evidence  Gaia (2006). 27 Lovelock draws inspiration from Henry David Thoreau, the pioneer of environmental awareness and a representative of literary ecology, who in 1851 presented a spiritual vision of the Earth, similar to the Gaia concept: «The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body-has a spirit-is organicand fluid to the influence of its spirit-and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me». He refers to our planet as a «living Earth», a «living thing » (in Worster, 1994: 79). In religious ecology, one of the branches of ecology, the myth of Gaia is one of the founding ones: Gaia symbolizes a lost world, an Eden, an earthly paradise from which humans were cast out because of their original sin: pollution and destruction of the planet. Other religious ecology myths are related to the one mentioned above. The myth of the apocalypse (present in Andrevon's texts) and the myth of a Savior or a martyr who redeems people's sins (in Andrevon's writing, the last man can be an example of a martyr; the myth of the Savior is present for example in Barjavel's Ravage. See in this regard: van Gaver, 2011). 28 It is not only Andrevon who exploits the Gaia hypothesis and Gaia's character. This motif can be found in popular culture and literature. For example, Gaia appears in the following literary texts: the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, Lovelock by Orson Scott Card and Kathryn H. Kidd, Helliconia by Brian Aldiss, Portent by James Herbert, Les Messagers de Gaïa series by Frederick d'Anterny, Genesis by sciously kills humans in order to be reborn: «Gaïa a fini par se gratter pour se débarrasser de ses puces» (Andrevon, 2006: 128). This particular choice of vocabulary («scratch», «fleas» referring to humans) contrasts the power of nature with the miserable condition of man: transient, weak, but vain after all.
It must also be emphasized that all these three anxiety-provoking personifications: the Yeti mother, the female Wendigo and Gaia, represent the feminized nature, a maternal figure who is vengeful and persecutory towards her human offspring.
However, as the story goes on, some doubt and ambiguity arises about the true distribution of nature's and humans' narrative roles. Is nature actually the evil phenomenon while man remains its victim? By introducing this ecoambiguity, 29 Andrevon presents a surprising reversal of these roles. After the disappearance of parasitic humans, the Earth is reborn: it heals from smoke and pollution to regain its former beauty and purity: vie (végétale, animale...) et aussi les forces minérales sont en expansion» (2009: 13). After the human race becomes extinct, nature undergoes the process of self-purification, resuming possession and control of the world. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy, humans do not appear to be masters and possessors of the Earth, but rather usurpers, whose irresponsible and non-ecological activities considerably changed the planet. After casting out the human usurper, nature recolonizes the world.
All the author's sympathy for nature is clearly visible in the ending of the novel where Andrevon explicitly shows that the disappearance of the human race proves to be a blessing for nature, as the last traces of artificial culture imposed by man are erased, and the natural order is restored on the planet. The writer evokes several species that are reborn thanks to the absence of man and he repeats as a leitmotif that the world finally belongs to them (this is the idea that appears in the title of the novel: Le Monde enfin): L'abeille Xylocope vrombit à la verticale du calice de la pivoine arborescente. Le lièvre sort avec prudence la tête de l'orifice de son terrier ; ses oreilles indiquent neuf heures quinze mais il se trompe sûrement: il n'y a plus d'heure d'horloge, seulement celle du soleil. Et il ne risque plus le plomb du chasseur. (...) L'abeille plonge tête la première dans l'enivrante odeur carminée de la pivoine. Le monde est à elle. Therefore, the ending of the novel emphasizes the idea that nature henceforth imposes itself as an autonomous narrative force and no longer a mere reflection of the human subject. Even though the story of the latter finishes in the novel and his voice is silenced, the story and the narrative of nature (re)commence. In that sense, Le Monde enfin fulfils the first main distinctive criterion of an environmental text, as defined by Lawrence Buell. According to this author, being one of the founders of ecocriticism, a literary text is environmentally oriented when «The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history» (Buell, 1995: 7).

conclusion
Even this brief analysis of the recurring motifs of Andrevon's novel highlights its environmental and neo-fantastic dimension. From the ecological perspective, Le Monde enfin is engaged in the «familiar strangeness» of the real. And it is this hic et nunc commitment that drives the author to address the end of the Anthropocene, the issues of biocentrism and ecoambiguity, as well as the anxiety-inducing revenge of personified and feminized Nature.
If the reader of the analyzed novel initially sees a text that respects the traditional author-reader contract of the canonical fantastic, with the conventional distribution of narrative roles, their perception of the text evolves as the story progresses. Later, nature is no longer perceived as the evil phenomenon. Andrevon's novel forces us to reject the anthropocentric worldview and urges to adopt a broader, more general perspective: a «non-H» vision. Thus, nature becomes the true protagonist and subject of the novel, as it has all the rights to abundantly develop in the spirit of biocentrism and without harmful human influence.
The ecological motifs make this game of canonical fantastic clichés particularly interesting to the contemporary reader, who, on the one hand, notices the derogation from the classic fantastic rules, and, on the other hand, is familiar with the ecological issues in his distressing everyday life. This union of ecology and the new fantastic not only meets the expectations of the modern reader by encouraging them to reflect on the world in which they live, suggesting awareness and modification of harmful behaviour: it also opens new perspectives for the development of the genre in question towards a certain kind of ecological Bildungsroman.