Contes et nouvelles d’Émile Zola. Une lecture sociologique

Abstract

Émile Zola started to write short stories at the beginning of his carrier. The image of the pioneer of Naturalism has always obscured this minor part of his literary production, which was regarded as a mere genetic support of his primary works. Nevertheless, Zola wrote short fiction throughout his entire literary and journalistic career and this rich ensemble of texts must not be considered as a minor and futile part of his artistic production, since it also offers new and enlightening elements. By reading the works of Zola “conteur” through the prism of literary sociology, we can not only realize how much the short stories have contributed to the authorship of the writer, but also observe the evolution of Zola’s artistic and literary ideas from a different point of view. These texts, which combine a literary and journalistic nature, allow us to better indentify the effects of médiatisation on Zola’s works, to observe the intimate dialectic between literary discourse and journalistic precepts, and finally they allow us to understand the development of the writer’s positioning in the field. The sociologic analysis of this corpus allows us to interpret the many authorial postures and the strategies that the writer adopted during his career. Through the reading of short stories, a real literary trajectory is outlined, which indicates the different steps of Zola’s progress in the media and literary field during the time. Placing themselves at the crossroads between literature and journalism, these texts redesign the ensemble of the Zola’s literary path and produce a new image of the writer. [Edited by Author]