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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.
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AbstractEmile Zola and Victorian Censorship — This paper is an introduction to four aspects of Victorian censorship — the National Vigilance Association, circulating libraries, the courts, and bowdlerism — and their impact on the translation of Zola's novels. In France, scandal ensured success, and the literary value of Zola's works was hotly debated by the press, but Zola was never taken to courts over his writings. On the contrary, in England, established literary circles held the Victorian translations of his novels in contempt and the National Vigilance Association, supported by the moralist Stead, launched a campaign to censor the translations. Henry Vizetelly, the editor of these translations, was required to appear two times before the courts to defend them, and both times he lost his case. Not only did he have to pay a fine and spend three months in prison, but Nana, Piping Hot! and The Soil were banned, even though these three translations had been bowdlerized by the translators and the editor prior to their initial publication. It becomes clear that Zola's interest in social reform and the intended readership — lower and middle classes — motivated the official opposition to these translations in England.
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While the association between naturalism and pornography predominates in the nineteenth century, addressing sexuality is a real balancing act for Zola. He even stated that he did not wish to devote a novel to homosexuality. Yet in La Curée, allusions to sapphism abound. To understand the construction of lesbianism in the work, as well as the implications of such a portrayal, this article analyzes Zola's language, his place within the social discourse of his time, and – through a genetic study – his hesitations regarding the sexuality of his characters.
Keywords: homosexualité féminine, lesbianisme, genre, Émile Zola, naturalisme, siècle, female homosexuality, lesbianism, gender, Émile Zola, naturalism, 19th Century
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As one knows, Zola disapproved of imagination left unto itself. The starting point of our reflection on the status of imagination in the realist tradition is a polemical remark that Zola wrote in a newspaper in 1866. The disfavour of the imagination that Zola expresses toughens the opposition between the unchecked use of fiction and the epistemological issues raised by a literature concerned with the real. This question was quite topical at the time, as one can see from the counter-arguments made by Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, and Flaubert, who were less reluctant to recognize the active role of imagination within the realist project. Zola is more specific about his poetics in Le roman expérimental (1879). Accordingly, one must pay attention to the idea of the “decline of the imagination” (déchéance de l'imagination), but also to two important nuances, whose role is to moderate this realist postulate: tracked down within the notion of invention, imagination is recycled in disposition and elocution and eventually reified through what Zola terms “the sense of the real” (le sens du réel), an aftermath of the “réalisme tempéramentiel,” of Romantic origin, that he supported in Mes haines. All in all, Zola's position, properly contextualized, compared and put into perspective, is not as remote as one would think from other claims to artistic realism.
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This article examines two short stories published by Louis Hémon, who was twenty years old during the turbulent period of the Dreyfus affair. It shows how writing was the basis of his radical conception of freedom and carried Zola's legacy. For, marked by this affair at the very start of his career, Hémon distanced himself from his family and, without severing ties, removed himself geographically. Similarly, he kept his distance from Parisian literary salons and their codes. Having conquered the freedom to write, Hémon used his pen to give voice to the have-nots, while remaining aware of their flaws and difficulties.