Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur l’analyse du thème de l’animalité et de la bestialité dans L’Homme qui tue d’Hector France, roman écrit en 1878 et La Bête humaine d’Émile Zola, roman qui date de 1890. Ces œuvres constituent deux regards croisés sur la France, l’un sur un pays vu de l’intérieur et l’autre sur un pays diagnostiqué à la lumière de sa politique coloniale. L’enjeu est de mettre en relief jusqu’à quel point ces deux œuvres contemporaines l’une de l’autre, à la fois se répondent mutuellement et se séparent inéluctablement. Dans leurs parcours, dans leurs positions politiques et idéologiques, dans leurs rapports à la France, dans leurs modes d’intervention dans l’actualité brûlante de l’époque, tout sépare France et Zola. Mais à force de creuser dans les différences, des ressemblances peuvent surgir. Au-delà de la parenté thématique de leurs œuvres dans le récit qu’elles font de la condition humaine à l’aune de l’animalité et de la bestialité, des accointances qui se tissent, de près ou de loin, entre les figures auxquelles donne lieu la métaphore de la bête humaine, des destinées similaires sinon identiques de certains personnages, les écarts sont si importants pour oser les occulter par un simple recensement de motifs, de thèmes et de mythes communs aux deux auteurs. Ce sont ces écarts qui sont extrêmement précieux. Plus les disparités se distendent entre les deux écrivains, plus les motivations de ce rapprochement deviennent plus justifiées et plus fécondes. Lire Zola et France l’un par rapport à l’autre, et éventuellement l’un contre l’autre, c’est repenser une partie importante de la carte littéraire de la deuxième moitié du XIXe. Cette redéfinition passe par la nécessité de mettre face à face le centre et la périphérie, le blason et son ombre, le monument et son fantôme / The present doctoral thesis aims at the analysis of the theme of animality and bestiality in Hector France’s The Man who Kills (L’Homme qui tue), a novel written in 1878 and Emile Zola’s The Human Beast (La Bête Humaine) which dates around 1890. These two works represent two crossed visions on France, one on a country viewed from outside and the other on a state diagnosed in the light of its colonial politics. The purpose is to highlight the extent to which these two contemporaneous works at once mutually respond to and yet inescapably break off from each other. In their plots, in their political and ideological positions, their relationships to France, their modes of intervention in the blazing events of the time, everything separates France from Zola. However, digging deep into the differences, certain similarities can come up to the surface. Beyond the thematic link between their works that belies the narration they make of the human condition to either animality or bestiality, the more or less interwoven acquaintances, between the figures resulting from the metaphor of the human beast, or the similar if not identical destinies of certain characters, the gaps are too important to be overshadowed by a mere inventory of motifs, themes, and myths common to both writers. It is these very gaps which are extremely genuine. The more the disparities widen up between the writers, the more the motivations of this merging become more justified and fruitful. To read Zola and France in relation to each other, and eventually the one against the other, is to re-think over an important part of the literary map of the second half of the nineteenth century. This redefinition follows from the necessity of bringing face to face the centre and the periphery, the blazon and its shadow, the monument and its phantom

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the different ways in which naturalist fiction was parodied in France at the end of the nineteenth century. It demonstrates first of all the validity of approaching naturalist literature through the medium of parody by defining and explaining the interrelation between parody and naturalism. If parody, which inscribes texts within texts, seeks by its very nature to reveal the illusory status of literature and makes the reader aware of the literary medium, naturalist fiction obeys the opposite impulse: its mimetic pretences lead it to hide its literariness. The principal aim of the thesis is thus to determine whether and to what extent parody can undermine the mimetic strategies of naturalist literature; and whether parody led to a renewal of naturalist fiction as it has done with other kinds of fiction. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part 1 concentrates on the theory of parody and provides a survey of the different conceptions of parody through the centuries. Chapter 1 of Part 1 deals with definitions of parody as a relatively minor practice. Chapter 2 is devoted to parody as a key factor in the renewal of literary genres as well as being a constituent of modern and post-modern aesthetics. In Chapter 3, I outline a twofold approach to parody: I argue that some texts are parodic by nature and that other texts are potentially parodic. In the former case the text is intentionally parodic, whether the reader is capable of identifying parody or not. In the latter case the very intentionality of parody is put into question. For a comprehensive poetics of parody both modes must be taken into account. Part 2 examines the numerous parodies that arise in the context of the reception of naturalist literature. I have uncovered over a hundred of these multigeneric parodies, which have allowed me to establish an extensive bibliography of the parodies of naturalist literature. Even though some of these parodies can be thought of as slight from a literary point of view, they provide us with invaluable information on naturalism and its literary context. Besides their general sociological and documentary value, these parodies unveil completely unexplored aspects of the literary battle provoked by naturalist writings. In this way new light is shed on the process of reception of naturalist fiction. The parodic dimension that can be found in the works of the so-called second generation of naturalist writers - Paul Bonnetain, Leon Hennique, Henri Ceard and others - is discussed in Part 3 of the thesis. In their works naturalist themes and procedures often become mechanised and overcoded: the strategies used to explore the very limits of the naturalist genre range from the comic grotesque, to the 'shocking', to the absurd. I f in the parodies studied in Part 2 naturalism was parodied from outside, in this phase it is undermined from within by a ' fifty. Interestingly, such practices are also to be found in the works of major writers associated with the naturalist movement (Joris-Karl Huysmans and Octave Mirbeau). Thus I use parody or self-parody as an interpretative grid to cast a different light on certain naturalist writings. Even though parody does not really lead to the renewal of naturalist fiction, it sometimes gives rise to reflection on literariness and the writing process. Such a meta-fictional use of parody is fundamentally innovative and represents a modern trend already evident in the fiction of the last decades of nineteenth-century.

<p>An analysis of Zolas Nana focusing on male desire. Through a study of the narrtive structure and the polemic relation between the concepts of “Nature” and “Culture” it is shown that opposing ideologies are imbedded in the text. Nana is a symbolic character, in large, a myth created by male desire that eventually becomes a manifestation of that desire. At the same time, however, the character Nana evolves from being a mirrored image of male desire into a more stable and real individual and this process is also an answer to when and why she dies,underlining the fact that she initially was a creation emanating from male desire and in losing those symbolic functions she loses her function in the novel.</p>

An analysis of Zolas Nana focusing on male desire. Through a study of the narrtive structure and the polemic relation between the concepts of “Nature” and “Culture” it is shown that opposing ideologies are imbedded in the text. Nana is a symbolic character, in large, a myth created by male desire that eventually becomes a manifestation of that desire. At the same time, however, the character Nana evolves from being a mirrored image of male desire into a more stable and real individual and this process is also an answer to when and why she dies,underlining the fact that she initially was a creation emanating from male desire and in losing those symbolic functions she loses her function in the novel.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Musicologie : Lyon 2 : 2003. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

Inaug.-Diss.--Würzburg. / Lebenslauf. "Literatur-verzeichnis": p. 75-76.

No description available.

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail, U.F.R. de lettres, philosophie et musique, litterature comparee, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references, index and list of errata.

Thesis (Doctoral)--Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail, U.F.R. de lettres, philosophie et musique, litterature comparee, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references, index and list of errata.

Part of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1938. / Lithoprinted. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago Libraries, Chicago, Illinois." Bibliography: p. 71.