Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris IV, 1977. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, p. 1097-1116) and index.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Lett.--Philosophische Fakultät der Universität Konstanz, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. [355]-379. Notes bibliogr. Index.

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : Literatur : Universität Freiburg : 2006 : Der photographische Blick bei Emile Zola. / Bibliogr. p. 249-255. Notes bibliogr.

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2002

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2010 Jun 1.

This thesis explores narrative as a self-reflexive commentary on the conditions of its own production. It argues that the need for narratives to perform economic functions, such as to provide an income for the author or to promote subscription to a host publication, affects how texts are written. It suggests that this approach is particularly suited to nineteenth-century prose fiction. It proposes a methodology for approaching this analysis based on treating the text as an exchange commodity in a transaction between author and reader whose economic function can be investigated and analysed. The thesis illustrates the application of this approach to major works of three nineteenth-century authors, following the evolution of the book format in France from its subordination to the roman-feuilleton in the late 1830s to its revival as an economically independent format in the 1880s, and contrasting this to the situation in contemporary Russia. A chapter on Balzac, which focusses on Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, shows how this work can be seen as both a mirror of the rapidly evolving world of publishing during the 1830s and 1840s and as an extended discussion on the constituents of narrative value. It demonstrates how Balzac first adopts, then rejects and parodies, literary devices developed for the rapidly commercialising world of the roman-feuilleton. A chapter on Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, serialised in 1879-80, examines how an author could develop strategies to create literary and economic value within a contemporary readership which was far less developed than that in France. It demonstrates how important literary devices which Dostoevsky uses can be shown to have economic as well as aesthetic effect. The thesis concludes by an analysis of Zola's role in the industrialisation of narrative, which mirrors the rise of the story itself as a key tool of commercialisation. It illustrates this by a discussion of L'Argent (1891) as an allegory of the rise of the story as big business. The thesis promotes the relevance of economic criticism as an underrecognised critical discipline.

In view of the fact that very little of the total body of Zola scholarship concerning Germinal can be classed as "new" criticism and that until recent years, most studies of the novel have stressed the historical, biographical and sociological issues which are central to the plot, this analysis will attempt to analyze in terms of the vertical perspective the thematic and structural patterns which form the basis of Germinal. Indeed Zola insists in his letters that we read Germinal as a symbolic structure and not just as the mere reproduction of facts or reality in that he claims facts function as a springboard from which his creative imagination takes a leap towards the higher, more complex level of symbolic meaning. Thus, if Zola is creating a work of art, as he insists he is, and if art by definition is the product of the creative imagination, it is then essential to read Germinal as such and , thus to employ one's own imagination in order to examine the complex structure the artist has produced. Clearly, to restrict one's vision of the novel to the surface events and issues is to pass over the more subtle and exciting aspects of the novel which remain hidden in the intricacy of its symbolic structure. Zola's use of symbolism becomes apparent by analyzing the vertical perspective revealed in the thematic and structural patterns around which the plot is woven and hence which are central to the novel as a unified, total work of art. As a definition of vertical perspective, I am using Northrop Frye's concept that in all great works of literature, the artist presents two totally opposite visions of human existence: one inferior and one superior to our own which together form the demonic and divine poles respectively and which thus correspond to the vertical poles of Heaven and Hell in religion. In Germinal, the analysis of thematic patterns will focus on the general theme of sexual relations which is presented in terms of the demonic and divine perspective. The least complex sexual relationships are those which represent the divine pole; for example, the Grégoire and the Maheu marriages. The negative or demonic sexual relationships are divided into three sub-themes: the theme of adultery, the theme of castration and the theme of the virgin which is central to the 'Gothic tradition in literature. The structural patterns center on what Frye calls the moral and anagogic levels of meaning. The first pattern involves the intricate link Frye makes between the four narrative forms of comedy, tragedy, romance and irony, the four seasons which he associates with the forms and the one year time span of Germinal. Together, these three factors chronicle Etienne's progression towards moral maturity. Secondly, the anagogic structure presents in symbolic terms a vision of man's destiny as he struggles to maintain an existence between the demonic and divine poles of his society which correspond to the Heaven and Hell of traditional Christian doctrine. Moreover, on the anagogic level, Germinal embodies the Christian archetypes of the Creation, the Battle of Armageddon and the Apocalypse in terms of the social rebel lion which Zola portrays. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This study examines the representation of women in Emile Zola’s famous series Les Rougon-Macquart. Critics have described Zola’s novels and their presentation of women as misogynist, yet this judgment obscures many of the textual details establishing the female protagonists’ relationships to industrial capitalism and the rapidly changing social landscape in late nineteenth century France. This study reexamines the narrative synthesis between Zola’s naturalist “objective” narrator and his female protagonists. It also highlights one particular pairing that of Adelaide Fouque and her opportunist daughter-in-law, Felicité Puch: Whereas Adelaide, the biological matriarch of the family who figures in each of the twenty novels, does not have an active voice, Felicité as maternal protectrice of the family speaks frankly, even aggressively. Zola uses this pairing to link one generation to the next, a key structural element of his naturalist project. Ultimately, Zola’s representation of women is more complex than might otherwise be understood. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Texte remanié de : Thesis : ? : University of Colorado : 1993 : Elle se fit Maternelle : motherhood in Les Rougon-Macquart, by Emile Zola. / Table des matières à l'adresse. Bibliogr. p. 147-150. Index.

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