Esthétique naturaliste et épistème réaliste dans les romans d'Émile Zola

Abstract

The works of Emile Zola are the result of the convergence between the novel theorist (see his famous prefaces) and the literature practitioner who was Zola. In these two hypostases, Zola appreciates writers who put truth/reality at the basis of their works. He thinks that the novelist's role is to search for reality, to investigate reality, to find in the events typical for human nature the games of passions his/her novels will describe. He combines his orientation towards realism – influenced by reading Stendhal, Flaubert, Balzac, Michelet – and naturalism, this stubborn, thorough and scientific observation of human nature so much valorized that his works become a huge and vivid chronicle of an epoch and of mankind. His three series « Les Rougon-Macquart », « Les trois villes », « Les quatre évangiles » are the proof of the successful mingling between realism and naturalism which may sometimes become united.