La boucle bouclée? The Quest for Identity in Le Clézio’s "Printemps" and Poisson d’or

This article examines the quest for identity of two young Moroccan women, Libbie-Saba in the short story “Printemps” and her counterpart Laïla in the picaresque novel Poisson d’or, published eight years later. Each young woman takes a pair of moon-shaped gold earrings with her on her journey. The earrings are the mechanism by which we can trace an intriguing change in Le Clézio’s thinking as he rewrote and developed the novel from the short story. In addition, they illuminate each protagonist’s effort to make sense of her past and more important, show her a path forward.