Le drame social naturaliste: tranches de vies ouvrières (1870–1900)

Abstract:Based on a corpus of nine plays performed between 1870 and 1900, this article sets out to define the naturalist social drama, to determine its generic criteria, and to explore its representations of the working-class milieu, which involve an engagement with political discourse as well as a degree of theatrical innovation. While social struggle and working-class life correspond to the project of “living truth” carried out by naturalist theatre, they are also the object of a spectacularisation that seems to contradict, a priori, its ethno-sociographic ambition. The notion of spectacular realism is thus put forward as an effective way of thinking about the genre. (In French.)