Includes bibliographical references (pages 521-530) and indexes.
Summary:
The trilogy of the Three Cities is a separate cycle in Zola's work, especially because it is part of the battle between faith and reason. This work aims to study how it participates by analyzing its main sources in order to uncover the passage of a Zola reader to a Zola creator, reading as enriching the novelistic writing. Thus, the dialectic between faith and reason is led by Zola with his sources, which they serve as foils or models. Through the reflection and reflexivity of reading and writing, in a constant play of divergences and convergences, the process of creation is enlightened by the constant dynamics of the sources to the files then the files to the novels. In fact, each source is evaluated by the yardstick of the romantic experimentation. From Lourdes to Rome, then from Rome to Paris, the novels sign the bankruptcy of Catholicism. The trilogy thus appears as the answer to a society in search of landmarks and that the Church would want to heal by a bleeding of reason. Catholicism dead, we must propose something else to found a new society. Such is the ambition of the novelist. That's why revealing Zola's report to his sources means analyzing The Three Cities as novels-experience, in addition to returning to the very foundation of writing as the matrix of the Zolian paradigm.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.