Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Le mot « intime » en français suggère à la fois la convivialité au sein du cercle familial et la conscience intérieure de l’individu. Cette dualité essentielle de l’« intime », qui attire de nombreux écrivains français depuis des siècles, englobe un large éventail de thématiques littéraires, caractérisées par deux courants : la représentation de la vie familiale et les écrits autobiographiques. En règle générale, l’esthétique du naturalisme établie par Zola est considérée comme indifférente à l’égard de la littérature intime, développée par les écrivains romantiques. Cependant, certains de ses romans présentent les caractéristiques de l’écrit de l’intime du XIXe siècle. Dans cette étude, nous nous attacherons à établir le lien intérieur entre La Joie de vivre (1884), L’Oeuvre (1886) et Le Docteur Pascal (1893), trois romans exceptionnellement chargés d’éléments autobiographiques dans la série des Rougon-Macquart. L’intrigue de ces œuvres se déroule au sein du foyer et se concentre sur la psychologie des protagonistes, qui pourraient être définis comme alter ego de l’auteur. Dans La Joie de vivre, Zola projette son angoisse personnelle sur Lazare, jeune pessimiste souffrant de névrose. Dans L’OEuvre, l’auteur exprime sa vision esthétique à travers la création douloureuse du peintre Claude. Dans Le Docteur Pascal, véritable synthèse de la série, Zola manifeste enfin sa croyance optimiste à la vie à travers Pascal, son porte-parole. Le discours de l’« intime » chez Zola, aspect essentiel mais pourtant négligé de son œuvre romanesque, montre ainsi une mise en pratique du roman psychologique que l’auteur semble pourtant vouloir rejeter dans ses écrits « naturaliste ». / This study focuses on the two themes which the word “ intimacy ” refers to : firstly private life in a family, and secondly internal conscience of each individual. Due to the dual meaning of this word, two mainstream themes in the 19th century literature were formed : presentation of familial life and autobiography. In considering “ intimacy ” in naturalism, which have not been taken up until now, the autobiographic nature of Zola’s novels will be brought to light, as compared to autobiography in romanticism. This study examines and analyses three particularly autobiographical novels from total twenty volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series : La Joie de vivre (1884), L’OEuvre (1886) and Le Docteur Pascal (1893), considering those novels as a trilogy. Those three pieces clearly reflect the duality of “ intimacy ”, in depicting family life of the protagonist and, at the same time, the interior mind of Zola who appears as his alter ego. In La Joie de vivre, Zola, as a pessimist suffering neurosis, is depicted through Lazare. In L’OEuvre, Zola, based upon his experience as an art critic, demonstrates his artistic vision through the painter Claude. In Le Docteur Pascal, Zola’s confession full of optimism, contrary to the past after having concluded his works in the Rougon-Macquart series, is reflected in Pascal who is a philosophical scientist. This study analyses how Zola, who has been deemed as a naturalist in sharp contrast to an autobiographical writer, has taken the theme of “ intimacy ” into his novels through his own experience in private life, and how he produced the trilogy novels which are fiction and, at the same time, autobiographical pieces.

The description of odour, frequent in Zola's work, has been little studied, most researchers having focused only on the visual description of this novelist. This dissertation, taking as its corpus Les Rougon-Macquart, explores this issue. The working hypothesis is that Zola reveals his impressionist tendencies in this type of description. The first chapter presents a brief history of the status of olfaction and description of odour in its philosophical, social as well as in literary context. The following chapter, after having defined a few concepts (notions from Hamon and Adam), presents the status of the description of odour in Zola's work. Four recurrent devices emerge: redundancy, multi-sensorial description, clausulae and turning points. The third chapter begins the study of the internal working of the description by examining the lexicon of odour. The lexicon of odour as used by Zola resorts mostly to the emotional and poetical functions of language. The final chapter continues the examination of modes of structuration, using Adam's notion of plan of text. The text concludes by maintaining that Zola's uniqueness is based on his marriage of impressionism and realism-naturalism. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

No description available.

In 1975 the eminent French philosopher and historian of science, Michel Serres, published Feux et signaux de brume: Zola, in which he postulates that the well-known Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola was an "epic of entropy." His seminal book stirred up interest in the Zola criticism community, with several literary scholars seeking to interpret the work of the founder of the naturalism movement in terms of thermodynamics. This thesis was partially informed by our reading of Serres' book, enlightened by our own expertise as an engineer specializing in the field of thermodynamics. We hypothesize that the difference between Zola's somber naturalism and the more optimistic literary realism movement from which it emerged in the latter half of the 19th century reflects the timely appearance and vulgarization of thermodynamic principles in the French popular press. We begin by presenting an overview of this then-new branch of science, whose foundations were established by Nicolas Sadi Carnot in 1824 and whose maturation was assured, principally by Rudolf Clausius, between 1850 and 1865. We then present the thermodynamic principles which we postulate arguably could have played a determinant role in the emergence of Zola's naturalism in 1870, as outlined in his Roman experimental (1880). Foremost among these is the celebrated Second Law and its distressing consequence to many, the inevitable entropy death of the universe. Having established the fundamental concepts of thermodynamics, we undertake an analysis of Serres' book aimed at exposing and critically commenting on the theoretical basis of his thermodynamic reading of Zola. We then follow the same approach in our analysis of several critical articles from the archival literature that owe their genesis to Serres' work. Finally, we undertake a close reading of three novels from the Rougon-Macquart series that we have either not considered elsewhere in the thesis or whose thermodynamic implications we have not yet exhausted: Nana, La Bête humaine, and L'Assommoir. According to the hypothesis of this thesis, Zola consistently followed the same disastrous paradigm, informed by thermodynamic principles, when he imagined the disastrous life trajectories of his principal characters. We have applied a version of this paradigm in interpreting our own close reading of a representative sample of works from the Rougon-Macquart series. Michel Serres sought to point out the obvious parallels that exist between the catastrophic nature of the series and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We wish to go a bit further in promoting the idea that the transformation of literary realism into Zola's brand of naturalism may have been prompted by the vulgarization of thermodynamics in the contemporary popular press. Lastly, the content of this master's thesis provides a new perspective to and vocabulary for naturalist criticism. / Master of Arts / In 1975 the eminent French philosopher and historian of science, Michel Serres, published Feux et signaux de brume: Zola, in which he postulates that the well-known Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola was an "epic of entropy." His seminal book stirred up interest in the Zola criticism community, with several academics seeking to interpret the work of the founder of the naturalism movement in terms of thermodynamics. This thesis was partially informed by our reading of Serres' book, enlightened by our own expertise as an engineer specializing in the field of thermodynamics. We hypothesize that the essential difference between Zola's somber naturalism and the more optimistic literary realism movement from which it emerged in the latter half of the 19th century is the timely appearance and vulgarization of thermodynamic principles in the French popular press. Michel Serres sought to point out the obvious parallels that exist between the catastrophic nature of the series and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. We wish to go a bit further in promoting the idea that the transformation of literary realism into Zola's brand of naturalism may have been triggered by the vulgarization of thermodynamics in the contemporary popular press.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

L'institutionnalisation de Zola, comportant à la fois la consécration d'une image officielle et la labellisation d'un corpus textuel, doit être envisagée à travers des manuels scolaires, histoires littéraires, études critiques et générations de lecteurs, en tant que réconciliation des métadiscours et conciliation des horizons d'attente. Linéarités, stratifications, constellations sémantiques et formelles sont des visions différentes d'un même objet de lecture, à savoir le texte naturaliste. Une entité qui parcourt sans cesse, par le biais du paratexte - documents critiques, sons et images - prolongation de la lecture jusque dans la périphérie de l'espace textuel, un chemin à double sens. De l'univocité sémantique longuement promue sur le plan scolaire à travers une critique de l'intentionnalité au trop plein de « déstructuration » menant parfois à un non sens ; puis de l'approche structuraliste comme réaction contre l'historicité atrophiant les sens et claustrant la spontanéité du lecteur à l'approche thématique libérant les fantasmes de la lecture dans un monde de symboles, le texte zolien cherche à joindre son lecteur. Ainsi, tout au long de notre étude, nous sommes allée à sa rencontre. Nous n'avons fait qu'observer, noter et constater. À présent, nous laissons entièrement aux lecteurs le soin de conclure … et de recevoir. / The process institutionalising Zola, implying both a recognition of an official image and the labelling of a textual corpus should be considered, by examining school text books, history of literature books, essays and other critical studies, and readers' generations as reconciliation of metadiscourses and conciliation among several « horizons of expectation ». Semantic and formal linearities, stratifications, constellations are all different sides of the same reading object, i.e. the naturalistic text. This entity travels incessantly along a doubleway road through the paratext, an extension of the reading experience up to the peripherical text area : critical documents, sounds and images. From the semantic univocity, which was longly promoted at school level thanks to an intention-focused criticism, up to an overdestructuration sometimes leading to nonsense ; then, from the structural approach reacting against that historicity which atrophies sense and confines spontaneous reading up to a thematic approach liberating a whole world of symbols, Zola's text tends to reach its reader. Thus, we have tried to join his text all throughout this analysis. Indeed, we have simply observed, noted and attested. From now on, we assume that it belongs to readers to get to a conclusion and… to receive.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Thesis--Lunds universitet, 1980. / Errata slip inserted. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-209).

Le mot " intime " en français suggère à la fois la convivialité au sein du cercle familial et la conscience intérieure de l'individu. Cette dualité essentielle de l'" intime ", qui attire de nombreux écrivains français depuis des siècles, englobe un large éventail de thématiques littéraires, caractérisées par deux courants : la représentation de la vie familiale et les écrits autobiographiques. En règle générale, l'esthétique du naturalisme établie par Zola est considérée comme indifférente à l'égard de la littérature intime, développée par les écrivains romantiques. Cependant, certains de ses romans présentent les caractéristiques de l'écrit de l'intime du XIXe siècle. Dans cette étude, nous nous attacherons à établir le lien intérieur entre La Joie de vivre (1884), L'Oeuvre (1886) et Le Docteur Pascal (1893), trois romans exceptionnellement chargés d'éléments autobiographiques dans la série des Rougon-Macquart. L'intrigue de ces œuvres se déroule au sein du foyer et se concentre sur la psychologie des protagonistes, qui pourraient être définis comme alter ego de l'auteur. Dans La Joie de vivre, Zola projette son angoisse personnelle sur Lazare, jeune pessimiste souffrant de névrose. Dans L'OEuvre, l'auteur exprime sa vision esthétique à travers la création douloureuse du peintre Claude. Dans Le Docteur Pascal, véritable synthèse de la série, Zola manifeste enfin sa croyance optimiste à la vie à travers Pascal, son porte-parole. Le discours de l'" intime " chez Zola, aspect essentiel mais pourtant négligé de son œuvre romanesque, montre ainsi une mise en pratique du roman psychologique que l'auteur semble pourtant vouloir rejeter dans ses écrits " naturaliste ".