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LE GENRE NARRATIF COMME REFLEXION SUR l’HISTOIRE: UNE ETUDE
D’ŒUVRES CHOISIES DE FLAUBERT, DE MAUPASSANT ET DE ZOLA
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of
Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Ester J. Hoogstaden, B.A., M.A.
*ie*icie
The Ohio State University
2001
Dissertation Committee :
Professor Charles D. Minahen, Adviser
Professor Jean-François Fourny
Professor Karlis Racevskis
Approved by
Adviser, Department of
French and Italian

UMI Number 3011073
UMI
UMI Microform 3011073
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ABSTRACT
Focusing on works of Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola, this study analyzes
both the representation of history in nineteenth-century French realist and
naturalist narrative, and the conception of history these authors convey by
fictionalizing it. The selected works were all written during the period they depict,
which stretches from the revolution o f 1848 to the end of the Second Empire, and
the authors experienced personally the events described in their fiction.
The inquiries in the different chapters have two points in common: first,
they take realist discourse as their subject, and, second, they take as hypothesis
the idea that the literary works propose a discourse on history. The three authors
respond differently to the problem of the representation of history, but they all
introduce in their works a conception o f history that differs from the traditional
public history as a systematic classification and description of historical facts.
Michel Foucault’s reflections on history, elaborated in chapter one, help to
discover a certain originality in the representation of history by the authors.
Chapter two examines the representation of history in Gustave Flaubert's
L ’Éducation sentimentale (1869). Flaubert only represents political history
through fiction, which seems fragmented, absurd and incomprehensible.