Description
Book SynopsisThe Dreyfus Affair’s Literary Politics offers a new interpretation of writers’ political engagements in the crisis that ended the French nineteenth century, following the wrongful treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Émile Zola and three writers connected to him – Ferdinand Brunetière, Henry Céard and Saint-Georges de Bouhélier – drew on their affinities and antagonisms concerning Zola’s naturalist fiction to shape their political discourse in the Dreyfus Affair. Zola and Bouhélier were Dreyfusard, Brunetière and Céard anti-Dreyfusard, yet in each case they transformed a vision of what literature should be into arguments about French national identity, the proper relationship between literary and political thought, and the tensions between individual rights and
raison d’état.
Developing a method entitled ‘microhistories of ideas,’ Cooke shows that a longitudinal approach to each writer’s career yields a set of central unit-ideas that reappear in the new, emotive context of the Affair. Through close readings of material such as pamphlets, newspaper columns and aesthetic essays, the significance of often ephemeral writing to the larger questions of intellectual history – and to the outcome of the Dreyfus Affair itself - becomes clear.
Trade Review"The significance of this approach is to highlight the importance of esthetic considerations in this—and potentially other—political debates rather than making art the handmaiden of political discourse. I think this is not only original, but could become a model for scholars studying literary politics in other times and places."
Robert A. Nye, Oregon State University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Microhistories of Ideas and the Dreyfus Affair
Concise Chronology
1. The Prehistory of ‘J’Accuse…!’: Zola’s Career as Critic
2. Beyond ‘J’Accuse…!’: Zola in the Dreyfus Affair
3. Against Zola and Individualism: Ferdinand Brunetière from Literary Critic to anti-Dreyfusard
4. Saint-Georges de Bouhélier,
Dreyfusard malgré lui5. Henry Céard Reads the Dreyfus Affair
Conclusion
Bibliography
