Le Grand Meaulnes, fin de race, fin de siècle

In the work of Alain Fournier, the aristocracy appears as the sign of the end of a world. The nobility, the people who represent it, are never actually perceived and only displayed through the prism of other social classes; everything suggests that transmission can no longer take place. Nobility is a fallen dream which takes root in memories of a feudalism which is fantasised about but which, not long afterwards, is forced to submit to a brutal awakening in the trenches of the first global conflict.