La Chair de l’idée: Poétique de l’allégorie dans Les Rougon-Macquart (review)

Following a style typical of a French ‘stylistique’ approach, this volume begins with a historical survey of critical thinking on allegory (pp. 23–59). The summary is generally clearly written, although it can be frustrating for a reader whose interest lies more specifically with Zola’s own use of allegory. It does not, however, seem necessary to know much about the historical tradition of allegory in order to read La Conquête de Plassans as a political allegory in which the conquest of a small provincial town stands for the Second Empire’s annexation of France itself. The use of female figures as allegories (Nana, Renée, etc) is convincingly argued, but there again it might have been more useful to have less on mediaeval allegory and more on the (briefly mentioned) links with Maurice Agulhon’s work on Marianne. The exact nature of the allegory would also seem more complex than is suggested: Nana may be an allegory for the Second Empire, but she also symbolically destroys the Second Empire. . . Zola himself was wary of the term ‘allegory’ and preferred to think of himself as working with symbols, but Reverzy, using the evidence of the Ébauches, convincingly argues that he constructs his novels as allegories. She emphasizes the repetition and ‘pauvreté’ of Zola’s writing (p. 64) and constantly returns to his didactic search for ‘lisibilité’ and ‘sens’, which from the outset has been seen as characteristic of allegory in general. Unfortunately, the result of this emphasis on ‘clarté’ is that she has trouble accounting for the darker side of Zola’s writing. Her approach is thus both fruitful and frustrating: in Le Ventre de Paris, the women selling different products are visual personifications, complete with the ‘attributes’ that accompanied mediaeval iconographic allegories; but at the same time ‘Les Halles peuvent se charger de valeurs contradictoires’ (p. 119), an observation that points to something rather more complicated and less straightforward. Similarly, Zola’s frequent use of pictorial tableaux is intended to ‘faciliter l’accès au sens’ (p. 141), but one could cite many examples in which such tableaux exceed and even contradict the simple clear meaning that they are ostensibly setting out. Reverzy does speak of the role of the reader (or ‘herméneute’) and Zola’s modernity, but this is never really reconciled with her continued reiteration of his didacticism and transparency. If Zola’s writing includes a ‘brouillage de sens’ (p. 149) and is ‘non sans chercher à preserver sa part d’ombre’ (p. 158), this is seen as a mere ‘fêlure’ in the system of allegory (p. 236), in other words a mistake, rather than being given a true role in its own right. The result is a study of the Rougon–Macquart that is certainly interesting, but which can at times appear to be pursuing an argument that occludes its own fatal flaw.