Abstract EN:

This work is based on the analysis of narrative in a corpus of novels (from 1834 to 1990), the setting of which is dedicated to Rome in the first century, a. D. It offers some hypotheses on the conditions in which the historical novel is created and functions. The purpose of the study is to highlight, by following the processes the novelist goes through, what problems are raised and how they are solved, within the very specific framework of the relation between history and fantasy. The creation of a historical novel is indeed "intertextuality" - the novel is the palimpsest of a historiographic hypotext. How does one pass from writing history to writing storie the study analyses how these works satisfy the two demands of realistic writing and popular writing - readability and description, which answer the lay reader's need for coherence and his thirst for referential illusion. The study shows how the clash between the pagan supernatural and the Christian supernatural produces a dialectic with argumentative purposes. Indeed, until the last few years, historical novels dedicated to that period have had a lission of Christian apologia. The study explores current trends in works of fiction in which religions emancipation, critical distance, exacerbated fantasies of violence, sexuality and erudition are all to be found. For, indeed, such fictional representations of the past also convey a certain picture of the present.