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Abstract
The study analyses the conceptions of life in the novel, represented in contemporary biology as a specific condition of matter (‘être vivant’), depending on an environment (‘milieu’) and on aggressive struggle (including mortalism). The novel, as will be shown, represents these vital concepts in its plot by implementing them in different milieus, understood as social environments. On the one hand, these milieus are phantasmal, the famous ‘paradou’ for example. On the other hand, they are to be found on an imaginary line of the cultural evolution of mankind. In this way, thus is our claim, Zola is representing ‘false’ visions of life, whose ideological orientations already anticipate the bio-political visions of happiness which he will develop in his much-decried late work.
Abstract
The study analyses the conceptions of life in the novel, represented in contemporary biology as a specific condition of matter (‘être vivant’), depending on an environment (‘milieu’) and on aggressive struggle (including mortalism). The novel, as will be shown, represents these vital concepts in its plot by implementing them in different milieus, understood as social environments. On the one hand, these milieus are phantasmal, the famous ‘paradou’ for example. On the other hand, they are to be found on an imaginary line of the cultural evolution of mankind. In this way, thus is our claim, Zola is representing ‘false’ visions of life, whose ideological orientations already anticipate the bio-political visions of happiness which he will develop in his much-decried late work.