{"title":"La Critique et le dépassement de la « méthode expérimentale » dans Thérèse Raquin","authors":"Hélène Sicard-Cowan","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0330","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article makes the case for reading Zola’s protagonists Laurent and Thérèse as literary foils for one of the founding fathers of the experimental method, namely the physiologist Claude Bernard, and his wife, Fanny Martin. Drawing more particularly on elements from Bernard’s and Martin’s lives, as well as Bernard’s scientific writings, the article shows that Zola ‘performs’ two grueling experiments in the aforementioned novel: the first one, initiated by the author himself, results in the death of three protagonists and the paralysis of the fourth one; the second experiment, initiated by Laurent, reveals that the latter’s evaluation of Thérèse and his ensuing hypothesis are seriously flawed. In fact, Laurent’s gaze is marred by his tendency to ‘dirty’ nature (‘salir la nature,’ to borrow Zola’s expression), and his experiment doesn’t turn out the way he had originally planned, as both lovers turned murderers end up committing suicide together. This article thus argues that, in Thérèse Raquin, Zola resorts to critical posturing as a vivisector in a text that can be read as a revenge narrative which gestures towards the possibility for vivisectors to be ‘redeemed’ as individuals made fully capable of feeling compassion for their objects through angelic intervention.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nottingham French Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0330","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article makes the case for reading Zola’s protagonists Laurent and Thérèse as literary foils for one of the founding fathers of the experimental method, namely the physiologist Claude Bernard, and his wife, Fanny Martin. Drawing more particularly on elements from Bernard’s and Martin’s lives, as well as Bernard’s scientific writings, the article shows that Zola ‘performs’ two grueling experiments in the aforementioned novel: the first one, initiated by the author himself, results in the death of three protagonists and the paralysis of the fourth one; the second experiment, initiated by Laurent, reveals that the latter’s evaluation of Thérèse and his ensuing hypothesis are seriously flawed. In fact, Laurent’s gaze is marred by his tendency to ‘dirty’ nature (‘salir la nature,’ to borrow Zola’s expression), and his experiment doesn’t turn out the way he had originally planned, as both lovers turned murderers end up committing suicide together. This article thus argues that, in Thérèse Raquin, Zola resorts to critical posturing as a vivisector in a text that can be read as a revenge narrative which gestures towards the possibility for vivisectors to be ‘redeemed’ as individuals made fully capable of feeling compassion for their objects through angelic intervention.
期刊介绍:
Nottingham French Studies is an externally-refereed academic journal which, from Volume 43, 2004, appears three times annually, with at least one special and one general issue each year. Its Editorial Board is drawn from members of the Department of French and Francophone Studies of the University of Nottingham, with the support of an International Advisory Board.