“Quand arrivera la guerre de demain—Bientôt, je veux l’espérer”: Récits de guerre future, généricité et discours social

During the French Third Republic, a genre of stories arose that recounted imaginary international conflicts—what one might call “future war” novels. These works draw on other, closely related series organized by genre or by type of media production: revenge tales, Alsatian stories, fiction for children, scientific adventure stories, etc. But these “future war” novels also interact with non-narrative texts: strategic fictions, journalistic articles, military, historical and geographical books, and more. Each author redefines the genre of “future war” novels by negotiating among these different media and generic sources in his own way. With our analysis of the “future war” stories, we seek to demonstrate how a popular genre must be considered in its historical context. The specific practice of communication engages the text in its relationship with the genre- or media-based series to which it belongs, but this serial relationship is defined in its interaction with the other series that resemble it. (In French)