Dr. Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt is Assistant Professor of French at Pacific Union College. She specializes in 19th century French literature and culture and has published articles in The French Review, Excavatio, and Paul Claudel Papers and in collections. Dr. Snipes-Hoyt is also the Secretary-Treasurer of the Association International Zola et le Naturalisme and Associate Editor of Excavatio.
2006 0-7734-5527-2 This collection of essays seeks to raise a variety of questions: What is the relationship between Émile Zola’s naturalist project and traditional generic classifications? If the naturalist novel, as theorized in Le Roman expérimental (1880) was to break with earlier literary traditions in its emphasis on modern scientific methods and the depiction of contemporary society, were traditional genres and literary devices to disappear entirely? The contributors to this volume seek to answer these and other questions by identifying traces of earlier genres and subgenres and other discourses that interfere and interact with the mimetic intention of these works. The hypothetical nature of Zola’s theoretical basis allows for infinite variations and complexity in the texts created, which could be classified in a number of genres themselves, requiring interdisciplinary approaches to untangle their meanings.