"Solitaire comme Moïse" : Zola et l'impopularité
Résumé
Taking as a starting point Son Excellence Eugène Rougon and Germinal, this study focuses on
the use of the terms “popularity” and “impopularity,” which characterize the narrators − the
political minister and the syndicalist, respectively − in these two novels. More broadly, this study
addresses the poetics of the experimental novel that Zola has defined in three phases
(observation/experimentation/reaction) and reads into the notion of impopularity the symptom of
a failed integration, the result of the impossible adaptation of the fictional character to his new
milieu. Impopularity also serves the purposes of the novelist as he reflects on the power he has
over his readers, with the fear of seeing it reduced, a level of meaning to be found in these
movements from popularity to impopularity which affect the fictitious wielders of words – Eugène and Étienne