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Neophilologus (2008) 92:417428
DOI 10.1007/s11061-007-9080-x
Kathy Comfort
Published online: 21 September 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract This article focuses on one ofmile Zolas short stories in the Contes Ninon, Sur-des-Pauvres. A rst reading of the work reveals the structural similarities it shares with the traditional fairy tale. On closer examination, it becomes clear that Zola borrows rhetorical devices from a fairy tale subgenre, the Saints legend. In fact, the borrowings from popular Catholic belief underscore the theme of social justice that will become one of the hallmarks of the authors later works. Consequently, Sur-des-Pauvreshalf conte de fes, half conte thse,may be seen as an bauche of sorts for Zolas better-known works.
Emile Zolas short story Sur-des-Pauvres was rst published in 1864 in the collection Contes Ninon some 7 years before the rst novel in the RougonMacquart. Sur-des-Pauvres is a hybrid of sorts, half conte de fes and half conte thse, a combination that may surprise the reader not acquainted with Zolas (1879) earlier works. Friedrich Wolfzettel (1988) argues that the collection constitutes une tentative programmatique dclaircir et de problmatiser les fondements mmes [dun] romantisme omniprsent au dbut de la seconde moiti du XIXe sicle (185).1 Sur-des-Pauvres exemplies this tentative program-matique in that it deals with many of the ideological issues that characterize Zolas uvre as a whole, chief among them that of social justice.
1 Ren Godenne observes that, in the rst half of the nineteenth century, a rayonnement de la morale, religeuse, didactique, sentimentalo-romanesque (143) typied the French short story. Sur-desPauvres, written when Zola was still strongly inuenced by his Romantic predecessors, exhibits the qualities Godenne (2005) enumerates.
K. Comfort (&)
Department of Foreign Languages, University of Arkansas, 425 Kimpel Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USAe-mail: [email protected]
Sur-des-Pauvres: A Saints Legend la Zola
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418 K. Comfort
The storys fantastical elements and fairy tale structure, evident on even the most cursory of readings, may lead some to conclude that this is a less serious work than the novels that make up the Rougon-Macquart. Recent fairy tale criticism shows us that these deceptively simple works are in fact socially symbolic acts and narrative strategies formed to take part in civilized discourses about morality and behavior in particular societies and culture (Zipes Myth 19). The...