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The series of the Rougon-Macquart is the grand epic of the nineteenth century. As in the series that comprise the earlier, classical epics, each link in the chain can stand alone and be examined separately from the rest. La Curee, the second novel in the series, is particularly interesting for, in it, a naturalist novel--itself an ironic form--Zola has written a myth in the true sense of the word. An archetypal study of La Curee reveals three distinct and definite stories recounting the Quests of three distinct and definite heroes. All of these heroes follow the pattern of what Joseph Campbell calls the Monomyth, the universal, metaphorical rendering of the explanation of life. This Monomyth is the story of the Hero's Quest and always entails certain steps: separation from society (especially mother), initiation (tests and trials), and return to society, the Hero bringing with him the boon of knowledge gleaned from the Quest. The myth of La Curee, like the universal Monomyth, has a specific structure: it is quite definitely circular and cyclical. The novel is circular in physical structure and the themes of death and rebirth, construction and destruction and the continual round of the phases of time recur in cyclical fashion. Zola's mixed use of demonic and apocolyptic imagery throughout is a further indication of the author's feeling (conscious or unconscious) for the mythic form within the guise of the ironic novel. Zola's desire to write a great epic succeeded in The Rougon-Macquart series, but his writing of La Curee shows that he was more than a scientist observing the history of a family--he was an imaginative author capable of explaining his world and survival in it, just as the classics and primitives explain theirs, through the metaphysical restatement of the Monomyth, the only truly universal art form.

Although most critics view Monluc's Commentaires as an historical work, there remains a literary value which cannot be neglected. Monluc recognized that an historical or military treatise alone would not ensure success. He therefore sought to improve the literary quality of the general narrative by impregnating it with subjective comments on moral, social, and military issues. The medium through which these comments are expressed to the reader is most often presented in the form of a remonstrance or speech. The purpose of this dissertation is to show the importance of remonstrance and oratory in the Commentaires relative to the general narrative and to determine their literary value. Remonstrance is defined in Huguet's Dictionnaire de la lanque francaise du seizieme siecle as an "exhortation" or "enseignement"; the term "discours" is mentioned as a treatise (traite) or account (recit) of certain events. Monluc's use of remonstrance and discourse in the Commentaires adheres closely to the above definitions. The remonstrances and discourses are found in the Commentaires as interruptions in the historical narrative or, especially in the case of oratory, as an integral part of an historical situation as described by Monluc. Monluc uses remonstrance and discourse for didactic purposes as he tries to impart his military knowledge to the reader; elsewhere his oratory becomes a tool of persuasion in furthering his own designs within the descriptive setting of an historical event while remonstrance takes the form of a complaint as he seeks to justify himself against accusations of treason and extortion. This study shows that the literary value of the Commentaires lies primarily in the application of remonstrance and oratory to historical narrative. The work is unique in that few histories of the period use remonstrance and oratory for the purpose of self-interested exhortation, counsel and justification. For this reason the Commentaires can be set distinctively apart as representing something more than history, they now become literarily appealing because they represent a particular application of forms that can be interpreted, discussed and analysed as literature. This study has uncovered a Monluc who is no longer to be viewed simply as a cruel and relentless soldier-historian but as an orator and polemicist who, considering the time period and the purposes for which he wrote, achieved great success in the forms of persuasion that he chose to use.

In La Tentation de l'Occident, written in 1926, the Chinaman Ling created a dividing line between the Orient and the Occident by saying that the Oriental wanted "to be" and that the Occidental wanted "to do." Ling's delineation of Orient and Occident, which can be defined as Yin Yang or "etre et faire," will form the basis of Malraux's attempt to fuse these two antithetical parts of the human psyche in order to create a new mode of being for Western man in the Oriental and Occidental trilogies. The task will be taken up by men of heroic stance who undergo shamanic initiation, thereby earning the right, in Malraux's viewpoint, to guide others. The Oriental trilogy (La Voie Royale, Les Conquerants, La Condition Humaine) will be treated as a Yin experience (etre) or a descent into the darkness of "time out of mind" in which Malraux freely experiments with various aspects of Oriental thought with the goal of creating a new balance between "etre et faire" through various paths of endeavor that would be acceptable to Western mentality: through isolated action in the jungles of Cambodia (Claude, Perken), through political action (Garine), through an effort to reintegrate the individual into concerted group activity while yet retaining his individuality (Kyo, Hemmelrich, Katow). The ultimate message of the Oriental experience, as it is mirrored through the shaman Gisors, is that Malraux's answer to Oriental absorption into the divine, though still on an abstract level, is Fraternity, or absorption into the human family. The Occidental trilogy (Le Temps du Mepris, L'Espoir, Les Noyers de l'Altenburg), or the Yang experience (faire), represents a coming back to "time within mind." The return to the relative sphere of existence changes the face of "etre et faire" from a purely metaphysical investigation which took place in the absolute freedom of cosmic timelessness in the Oriental trilogy, to an ethical investigation in which human action implies all the responsibilities involved in the encounter with one's fellowman in the immediate, existential, and historic moments of life. The practicality of the division of "etre et faire," as it represents the ethics of two groups, is explored (the anarchists and the purists versus the Communists in L'Espoir). The balance between "etre et faire," as it manifests itself in single individuals at different stages of life, is also reviewed (Manuel, Alvear). In its broadest terms, however, a detailed study of the characters of the Occidental trilogy shows that Malraux has arrived at a tentative solution for the West which treads a parallel path with the Orient. Although each man has an individual path, his doing is grounded in the Being of Fraternity. Kassner's intuition of Self, coupled with the intuition of a cosmic union with all men, is expanded in L'Espoir to take in individuals from the four corners of the globe, and culminates in the insight of the narrator of Les Noyers who is the shaman-writer Malraux, that although he is conscious of his own identity, he is also absorbed into the eternal flow of human history. On the individual level, this knowledge of self creates the desired balance between what a man "is" and what he "does" (Yin Yang). On a cultural level it will bring East and West together from which could arise a new value for modern man.