Like many other writers, Raymond Queneau was interested in myth. But what was his relationship to this entryway into the collective imagination? I propose here to examine the particularity of Queneau's ideas on myth, in all senses of the term. I begin by looking atwhat "myth" signified for Queneau, and considering how his relations with the surrealists and Georges Bataille kindled his interest in the social sciences and humanities in fashion at the start of the 20th century, and by studying his reading of the reflections of Nietzsche andJoyce on myth and literature. I also analyze Queneau's rewriting of ancient mythologies, Greek and biblical in particular, but also gnostic mythology, which for him was inextricably tied to Hegelian philosophy, and most of all to the idea of the "end of history." The notion of "modern mythology," which some view as debatable, is nevertheless examined in an attempt to illuminate the reasons why Queneau's character Zazie and Paris he described became so popular with the general public. These analyses reveal Queneau as a writer who was always fascinated by this type of story: saturated with symbols, structured by an oppositional tension, organized by a circular construction, and containing an underlying logic that, while maintaining anonymity, nourishes the collective imagination.
