Abstract: This article proposes a reading of Moravagine and Dan Yack through the lens of the adventure novel defined, as Matthieu Letourneux (2010) has proposed, as a confrontation with the unknown, with “savagery.” This popular colonial genre created a dense imaginary around the archetypal figure of the “primitive,” a figure to which Cendrars refers while diverting it. Revealing this intertext and its transformation allows us to identify a new relationship with alterity.
