Le lyrisme de l’évolution : les rêveries sur le vivant de Charles Nodier et de Camille Flammarion
The lyricism of evolution: Charles Nodier’s and Camille Flammarion’s reveries on life

Summary/Abstract: Long before the first translations of Charles Darwin’s works, evolutionary thought had been developing in France thanks to such authors as Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Charles Bonnet and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Although Georges Cuvier’s fixism and creationism remained the dominant scientific paradigm throughout the 19th century, writers drew their inspiration from evolutionary thought, subjecting it to lyrical and often para-religious interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Charles Nodier in his essay “De la palingénésie humaine et de la résurrection” and Camille Flammarion in his short stories “Clairs de lune” reinterpret different theories of evolution.

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