The Metamorphoses of the Self: The Mystic, the Sensualist, and the Artist in the Works of Julien Green: Studies in Romance Languages

American writer Julien Green's (1900--1998) origins, artistic motivation, and identity was a source of mystery and confusion even for those that most feted him. The first non-French national to be elected to the Academie francaise, Green authored several novels ( "The Dark Journey, The Closed Garden, Moira, Each Man in His Darkness, " and the "Dixie" trilogy), a four-volume autobiography ( "The Green Paradise, The War at Sixteen, Love in America" and "Restless Youth"), and his famous "Diary."

In this study, John. M Dunaway begins with an examination of the autobiographical context of Julien Green's works, in which the duality of mystic and sensualist is quite clearly polarized. He then proceeds through a selected series of Green's fictional works in an attempt to show the birth and nature of the third self as a personal myth of the artist. He then considers the fiction in chronological order with the intention of demonstrating the evolution of the myth of the third self in Green's career."