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 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

Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Spieker, Annika: Der photographische Blick bei Emile Zola--Freiburg im Breisgau, 2006. / Literaturverz. S. 249 - 255.

My proposed PhD, titled Zola's Naturalism in The Rougon-Macquart: The Fatality of Sexuality, aims to study the basics of the naturalistic novel in the second half of the nineteenth-century France. Firstly, I have looked back at previous critical studies that were dedicated to the themes of sexuality and/or fatality in Zola's writing. This introductory chapter helped me understand how far critics have gone and what a long way we still have to go before we can fully appreciate the importance of these themes in the context of naturalism. Throughout the twenty novels that make The Rougon-Macquart series, I studied the fictional characters in their being, their appearance and their evolution in space and time. I therefore investigated whether or not these characters were masters or slaves of their space and time and beyond that, what influences they had on each other. Afterwards, I questioned the fecundity of the theme of sexuality in Zola's work to find out both the aspects of originality in his writing and his contribution to the modern novel. Nevertheless, I have criticized Zola on a wider angle as an emeritus writer with his own "weaknesses". Methodologically, I have largely used the semiotics approach along with psychoanalysis due to the specificity of sexuality. Despite the wide range of critical studies on Zola's novels, in my sense, most of them have so far failed to tackle naturalism at its foundations, i.e. sexuality. In fact, if one attempted to free The Rougon-Macquart from the theme of sexuality, neither the Rougon-Macquart family would exist nor the twenty novels they generated. Studying sexuality therefore appeared to be essential to the understanding of the naturalistic theory. However, and surprisingly so, most of Zola's critics have avoided that inescapable theme, perhaps more likely for reasons of decency rather than for scientific ones. It is in such context that I have decided that it was time to bring it to light for the sake of truth about the knowledge of Zola.