Auteurs positivistes et autorité affective : la pitié tragique dans Germinie Lacerteux (Jules et Edmond de Goncourt, 1864)

Abstract

The article examines the narrative strategies of arousing the reader’s pity in Germinie Lacerteux by Jules and Edmond de Goncourt. It attempts to show that the novel’s authors rely on emotional effects in order to impose a certain moral attitude towards their heroine and, in the same time, to secure their authority as literary writers in an age marked by the supremacy of scientific positivism.