La medecine, le malade et le medecin dans l'oeuvre de zola
Institution:
Paris 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
This thesis is designed to show the exactness of the relationships which zola kept up between illness and medicine of his era, and to analyse the translation in his romantic work. Zola's work thus shows the particularity of wanting to be a medical work with a therapeutic vocation and can be compared, from a structural point of view, to a medical treaty. A close look at the writer's personal life leads one to understand that he is not only looking to cure society of its illnesses but also to cure "himself" through his writing. In addition, the writers with whom zola mixes are equally fascinated and worried by disease ; the era is at the physiological stage, which sends the romantic novelist back into his own worries and underlines his written project as a safety project. Zola studies a number of physiological works but, above all, psychiatric and hygienists' agreements which, although at first glance seem to show all the strictness of a scientifically objective point of view, actually base their theories on irrational feelings and which will play a fundamental role in zola's mythology. In the 19th century, medical theories were based on the imaginary. In this way, zola did not put the rational medical facts "into poetry" but transposed and illustrated medical mythology. Right until the end of his work, zola follows the development of medical thinking and suggests the same therapeutic solutions as the doctors.
Abstract FR:
Cette these s'attache a degager la specificite des rapports que zola entretenait avec la maladie et la medecine de son temps, et a en analyser la traduction dans son oeuvre romanesque. Car l'oeuvre de zola presente ceci de particulier qu'elle s'est voulue oeuvre medicale a vocation therapeutique et qu'elle peut etre comparee, d'un point de vue structurel a un traite de medecine. L'etude de la vie intime de l'ecrivain permet de comprendre qu'il cherche non seulement a guerir la societe de ses maux, mais aussi a "se"guerir par l'ecriture. Par ailleurs, les ecrivains que cotoie zola sont en meme temps fascines et angoisses par la maladie ; l'epoque est a la physiologie, ce qui renvoie le romancier a ses propres angoisses et renforce son projet d'ecriture comme projet de salut. Zola etudie de nombreux ouvrages de physiologie mais surtout, les traites des psychiatres et des hygienistes qui, bien que presentant en apparence toute la rigueur de l'objectivite scientifique, construisent en realite leurs theories sur des sentiments irrationnels et vont jouer un role fondamental dans la mythologie zolienne. Au xixeme siecle, les theories medicales reposent sur l'imaginaire. En ce sens, zola n'a pas poetise les donnees rationnelles de la medecine mais transpose et illustre les mythologies medicales. Jusqu'a la fin de son oeuvre, zola suit l'evolution de la pensee medicale et propose les memes solutions therapeutiques que les medecins.