840 Literaturen romanischer Sprachen; Französische Literatur
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Institute
On 7 February 1861, John Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy, delivered a historical lecture: he could prove that different gases absorb heat to a very different degree, which implies that the temperate conditions provided for by the Earth's atmosphere are dependent on its particular composition of gases. The theoretical foundation of climate science was laid.
Ten years later, on the other side of the Channel, a young and ambitious author was working on a comprehensive literary analysis of the French era under the Second Empire. Émile Zola had probably not heard or read of Tyndall's discovery. However, the article makes the case for reading Zola's Rougon-Macquart as an extensive story of climate change. Zola's literary attempts to capture the defining characteristic of the Second Empire led him to the insight that its various milieus were all part of the same ‘climate’: that of an all-encompassing warming. Zola suggests that this climate is man-made: the economic success of the Second Empire is based on heating, in a literal and metaphorical sense, as well as on stoking the steam-engines and creating the hypertrophic atmosphere of the hothouse that enhances life and maximises turnover and profit. In contrast to Tyndall and his audience, Zola sensed the catastrophic consequences of this warming: the Second Empire was inevitably moving towards a final débâcle, i.e. it was doomed to perish in local and ‘global’ climate catastrophes.
The article foregrounds the supplementary status of Tyndall's physical and Zola's literary knowledge. As Zola's striking intuition demonstrates, literature appears to have a privileged approach to the phenomenon of man-induced climate change.
This article looks at Émile Zola’s novel cycle Les Rougon-Macquart and argues that it describes its subject, the Second Empire, as a warming climate tending toward climate catastrophe. Zola’s affinity to the notion of climate is shown to be linked to his poetic employment of the concept of ‘milieu’, inspired by Hippolyte Taine. Close readings of selected passages from the Rougon-Macquart are used to work out the climatic difference between ‘the old’ and ‘the new Paris’, and the process of warming that characterises the Second Empire. Octave Mouret’s department store holds a special place in the article, as it is analysed through what the article suggests calling a ‘meteorotopos’: a location of intensified climatic conditions that accounts for an increased interaction between human and non-human actors. The department store is also one of the many sites in the novel cycle that locally prefigure the ‘global’ climate catastrophe of Paris burning, in which the Second Empire perishes.
Catastrophic Spectacle
(2018)
The wood-engraving with the caption “The first sight of Paris”, published in Cassell’s History of the War between France and Germany 1870–1871 (1873), does not depict a spectacular catastrophe. As its title already indicates, it rather illustrates a constellation of sight. What there is to see is not so much a spectacular vista but the fact that one sees – and the way how this works. I would therefore like to use the wood-engraving to analyse the basic setting that is formative for every constellation of ‘spectacle’. This prepares for the second step, which brings in the notion of catastrophe: I will argue that the spectacle of catastrophe which has gained prominence especially in the nineteenth century is not merely a phenomenon of representing catastrophe, but involves the constellation of spectacle as such. Spectacular catastrophes perform and derive their force from a catastrophe of spectacle – this is what the following
will elaborate on.
La guerre et le témoin
(2020)
En 2012, l’écrivain Jonathan Littell s’est rendu dans la ville syrienne de Homs, marquée par la guerre civile, pour rendre compte de cette guerre dans le quotidien Le Monde. Toutefois, il a publié ses notes non seulement sous la forme d’une série d’articles, mais aussi comme un livre indépendant. Dans ce contexte, la question se pose de savoir pourquoi cette décision a été prise. Le statut de témoin de guerre acquiert-il une qualité différente avec une autre forme de publication ? En outre, il faut souligner la problématique de la recontextualisation et de l’esthétisation du reportage quotidien de guerre à travers une allocation formelle et archi-textuelle de l’écrit du domaine journalistique au domaine littéraire. Car la publication d’un journal de guerre édité doit s’inscrire dans une longue tradition, comme on l’appellera dans l’article à l’exemple des œuvres d’Ernst Jünger, dont les relations avec l’écriture de Jonathan Littell sont à remettre en question ici.
A Prophet of Divine Wisdom?
(2020)
In the nineteenth century, the reception of Giambattista Vico’s writings came along with nationalist interpretations of his Scienza Nuova as an ‘Italian Science’. This tendency was based upon an increased examination of the role that the philosopher Pythagoras and his Italian school of Croton played in Vico’s hierarchical conception of the ancient Greek and Italian civilizations. Writers, archaeologists and historians used the New Science as a metonymic reference work for their own nationalist concepts by updating the Pythagorean myth in accordance with relevant narratives of exclusive genealogies concerning an ancient Italian wisdom. These narratives follow tendencies in Vico’s own writings that were quoted strategically and mixed with further interpretations of the Scienza Nuova as reliable testimonial for a glorious Italian history. A theological poet characterized by deeper insight into the secrets of nature and some parts of the divine providence, Pythagoras gains his special position in Vico’s general conception of knowledge.
Depuis plus de dix ans, les romans de Mathias Énard connaissent un succès qui ne se dément pas. La Perfection du tir en 2003, mais aussi Zone en 2008, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d’éléphants en 2010 et Rue des voleurs en 2012 ont remporté des prix littéraires de grand renom. Enfin, le jury du prix Goncourt a opté en 2015 avec Boussole pour un roman dans lequel « l’imagination » romanesque a pour support une époustouflante érudition portant sur l’Orient. Ce volume cherche à éclairer les modalités narratives qui permettent à l’auteur de transformer l’érudition en roman, mais aussi à situer son œuvre dans le contexte littéraire actuel