Abstract: This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola's La Faute de l’abbé Mouret (The Sin of Father Mouret, 1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republican discourses compete. Using Paul Ricœur’s theory on Christianity’s original sin, this article compares Mouret’s sickness with physical evil and illustrates how Zola redeploys the trad...
(read more)
Topics: 
Aesthetics
Humanities