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School of Modern Languages & Cultures: Department of French

Staff in the Department of French

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Publication details for Dr Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze

2003 Dousteyssier-Khoze, Catherine. 'L'Angoisse de l'influence naturaliste: Tous Quatre de Paul Margueritte et Le Termite de J.-H. Rosny', Nineteenth-Century French studies 31, pp. 123-137

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

This article focuses on two novels Ð Tous Quatre (1885) and Le Termite (1890) Ð by two Naturalist writers of the so-called second generation, Paul Margueritte and J.-H. Rosny, who were among the signatories of the famous "Manifeste des Cinq" (1887). It argues that these self-reflexive and self-parodical novels "narrativize" the crisis suffered by the Naturalist movement in the 1880s by showing two fictional (Naturalist) writers struggling against the "anxiety of influence." Through the strategy of mise en abyme these novels show both how Naturalism was undermined from within and how the young Naturalist writers were trying to renew Naturalism as a genre and expand the boundaries of fiction by experimenting with a kind of ultimate and narcissistic brand of Naturalism.