Emile zola : 1840-1867 : genese d'une oeuvre : essai de biographie intellectuelle et esthetique
Institution:
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Abstract EN:
This study purports to follow the way that has led zola to think of the rougonmacquart and to explain how the idealistic poet of 1858-1862 grew into the author of therese raquin within five years, and as early as 1868, laid the first stones of a huge building founded on the accurate observation of the contemporary world, and on the last scientific discoveries in physiology, to understand how a young provincial uprooted in paris at the age of eighteen, without any fortune, any degree, any acquaintance, achieved a name in journalism and literature in a few years. We have thus attempted at finding the multiple and complex conditions where from emerged a work that is meant as an outlook upon the contemporary world; we have tried to delimit this vision of things that is achieved through writing, its choices, its difficulties, its artfull tricks, by systematically studying the first works, as many first scales, perhaps, more revealing than the great texts of maturity, more controlled: poems, tales, various short stories, chronicles, novels, articles of literary or artistic criticism along which , through his reflection on contemporary literature and art, he contrived an aesthetic doctrine that can be defined by three terms: strong personality, modernity and truth. To follow this road, we have also relied on some unpublished documents: various archives, letters written or recieved by zola, first works quoted in appendix.
Abstract FR:
L'etude se propose de suivre le parcours qui a conduit zola a l'idee des rougonmacquart, d'expliquer comment le poete idealiste des annees 1858-1862 est devenu, en cinq ans, l'auteur de therese raquin et a pose, des 1868, les premieres pierres d'une vaste construction fondee sur l'observation exacte du monde contemporain et sur les dernieres decouvertes scientifiques en matiere de physiologie, de comprendre comment un jeune provincial, deracine a paris, a dix-huit ans, sans fortune, sans diplomes, sans relations, s'est fait, en quelques annees, un nom dans le journalisme et dans la litterature. Nous avons ainsi tente de retrouver les multiples conditions d'emergence d'une oeuvre qui se veut regard sur le monde contemporain, essaye de cerner cette vision des choses qui se fait a travers l'ecriture, ses choix, ses difficultes, ses derobades, en etudiant systematiquement les premieres oeuvres, premieres gammes plus revelatrices, peut-etre, que les grands textes de la maturite, plus maitrises: poemes, contes, nouvelles diverses, chroniques, esquisses, romans, articles de critique litteraire ou artistique, au fil desquels zola se forge, par une reflexion sur la litterature et sur la peinture contemporaines, une esthetique qui se definit par trois termes: temperament, modernite, verite. Pour suivre ce parcours, nous nous sommes aussi appuyee sur un certain nombre de documents inedits: archives diverses, lettres ecrites ou recues par zola, premieres oeuvres (publiees en annexes).