Naturalisme et positivisme

This seminar studies the naturalist literary "method" and its ideological implications in relation to 19th -century positivist thought and the disciplines it informed. Topics include scientism, anit-clericalism, republicanism, gender and social reform, and the birth of sociology. In addition to several novels from Zola's cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire , primary sources include texts by Maupassant, Comte, Taine, Littré, Durkheim. Secondary readings in the sociology of literature and cultural history.