Naturalisme et décadence

Catalog description

In this seminar we will read seminal works associated with these two nineteenth-century literary tendencies. We will explore the antithetical nature of their aesthetic programs and the ideological implications of their differences. Moving beyond the literary text, we will consider corresponding cleavages that divided France along similar lines between the old guard (Catholic monarchists) and the new (republican secularists), between science and the Church, between Dreyfusards and anti-Drefusards, among other conflicting viewpoints that polarized France at the end of the century. Works by Zola, Maupassant, Huysmans, Lorrain, Péladan, Mendès.