Cette é-volution qui re-vient. Le portrait (r)évolutif dans l’œuvre d’Émile Zola : le cas de L’Assommoir
The (r)evolution, which (re)turns. (R)evolutionary portrait in the work of Zola: the case of L’Assommoir

Summary/Abstract: Charles Darwin has become the face of a scientific revolution, initiating what Thomas Kuhn calls a “paradigm shift”. Darwin’s theory undermined the intellectual foundations on which the understanding of the world was based: stability and unchangeability. Darwin replaces them with the idea of a continuous but imperceptible change – evolution – which takes place in the world of living beings. Literature and culture in the second half of the 19th century succumbs to the power of this theory, which affects the imagination of creators. Among them is Émile Zola, in whose cycle Les Rougon-Macquart we find “evolutionary poetics”, which models the way of presenting characters (social evolution) and their corporality, which is the purpose of the article to demonstrate (an evolutionary portrait of especially Gervaise Macquart). A fictional body becomes a place of constant transformation, (de/re)materialization, which proves the fluid plasticity of life.

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