Chapter 4 Representations of the Banlieue in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart
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Abstract
The banlieue constitutes a leitmotiv in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, Histoire naturelle d’une famille sous le Second Empire. For Zola, this arithmo-maniac writer, these shifting suburbs were unreadable and impossible to categorize. Defining Paris’ banlieue during the second part of the nineteenth century is a difficult task as intertwined influences shaped Parisians’ perceptions and habits. After briefly sketching out how painters and writers depicted the banlieue, this study will focus on Zola’s multilayered and conflicting representations of the Parisian outskirts of the Second Empire in his Rougon-Macquart cycle. Zola both influenced and inherited the aesthetic visions of his time while also liberating himself from them, as creativity and modernity seem to emerge from this very chaotic space that is the banlieue of Paris. This space of margins acquired symbolic meaning as Zola elaborated an in-between space where texts and images could be deconstructed and reconstructed to reveal new art forms. These creative margins acquire a unique dimension for Zola as, for each novel, he developed an extensive preparatory dossier, where the genesis of his work unfolded as a sort of banlieue of his text.