Naturalisme—Vous avez dit naturalismes? by Cèline Grenaud-Tostain and Olivier Lumbroso (review)

Céline Grenaud-Tostain and Olivier Lumbroso have brought together sixteen wonderful essays by a range of scholars, largely based in France, who all turn, in ingenious and diverse ways, towards the plurality of 'naturalismes' promised in the playful interrogation of the collection's title. This range spans from many of the doyens of the field to the most exciting doctoral researchers, and the sense that lingers is one of the sheer vitality of this domain. The excellent Introduction by Grenaud-Tostain and Lumbroso poses key questions. First, '[d]e quelle manière cette notion [de naturalisme] est-elle utile pour analyser le développement de l'esthétique réaliste dans la seconde moitié du XIX^e siècle?' (p. 7). Second, which comparative approach would best account for the movement's geolinguistic and chronological variations? Third, how can we best analyse the intellectual exchanges generated by the act of translating naturalist literature between France and other cultures? And finally, 'de quelle façon est-il possible de circonscrire ce qu'on peut appeler le "néo-naturalisme" (naturalisme et roman colonial, roman psychologique, œuvres naturistes …), révélant la puissance recréatrice des écrivains et la fécondité du mouvement artistique?' (ibid.). In its 'Prologue' of four chapters, Henri Mitterand, René-Pierre Colin, Colette Becker and Pierre-Jean Dufief, and Kosei Ogura reflect on the vast dictionary projects that have characterized the field in recent times and to which they, as major players in this area, have themselves contributed. Renaud Oulié on Léon Hennique, Béatrice Laville on naturistes such as Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, and Marie-Ange Fougère on psychological novelists like René Boylesve and Édouard Estaunié, contribute to a section on the influence of naturalism on French fiction: 'Les Héritages: filiations et désaffiliations'. The international reach of naturalism is then asserted in four essays on 'Métamorphoses et résonances naturalistes en contexts': Aurélie Barjonet on Curt Grottewitz and Germany, Zaki Coussa on the Arab world, Ogura again on Japan, and Béatrice Desgranges on Mo Yan and China. The concluding section on 'Interactions et tensions: l'héritage critique du naturalisme au XXI^e siècle' brings together Chantal Pierre's critique of interpretations that reduce naturalism 'à une écriture désempathique' (p. 152); Véronique Cnockaert's reading of Au Bonheur des Dames in light of Claudia Senik's L'Économie du bonheur (Paris: Seuil, 2014); Marion Glaumaud-Carbonnier's truly inspired account of the very absence of divorce from Zola's œuvre; and Sophie Guermès's ingenious deconstruction of the failure of subsequent novelists and theorists properly to engage with 'les audaces des textes composant Le Roman expérimental' (p. 191). This volume, so rich in its energized sense of the international reach of naturalism, and of future lines of investigation not least in digitally fuelled research, reaches its finale in Corinne Saminadayar-Perrin's exemplary account of the 'poétique cyclique de l'histoire' in Les Rougon-Macquart.