Recycling Excrement in Flaubert and Zola

Manon Mathias

doi:10.1093/fmls/cqx040

Recycling Excrement in Flaubert and Zola

Manon Mathias

French

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

15 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article offers the first reading of human excrement in agricultural novels by Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. Drawing on insights from ecocriticism and psychoanalysis and focusing on the ‘dirty nature’ so rarely considered in green studies, I show that these writers challenge the boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. Whereas urban sanitation, pollution and public health are well studied in nineteenth-century France, less interest has been shown in the agronomic debates in the 1840s–60s regarding the role of our own excrement in the ecological system. Socialist philosopher Pierre Leroux drew on these debates to develop an agricultural model called the ‘circulus’ reusing human faeces as fertilizer and Flaubert and Zola explore the possibilities of this system in Bouvard et Pécuchet (1880) and La Terre (1887). Ultimately, however, excrement is exposed in their work as a form of truth about our bodies and our place within the ecosystem.

Original language	English
Article number	cqx040
Pages (from-to)	224-243
Number of pages	20
Journal	Forum for Modern Language Studies
Volume	54
Issue number	2
Early online date	6 Oct 2017
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx040
Publication status	Published - 1 Apr 2018

Bibliographical note

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The support of the Carnegie Trust in preparing this article is gratefully acknowledged.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 2 Zero Hunger
SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

Keywords

excrement
ecocriticism
the body
Flaubert
Zola

Access to Document

10.1093/fmls/cqx040Licence: Unspecified

Accepted Manuscript
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Forum for Modern Language Studies following peer review. The version of record Manon Mathias; Recycling Excrement in Flaubert and Zola, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 54, Issue 2, 1 April 2018, Pages 224–243, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqx040
Accepted author manuscript, 151 KBLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

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title = "Recycling Excrement in Flaubert and Zola",

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AB - This article offers the first reading of human excrement in agricultural novels by Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. Drawing on insights from ecocriticism and psychoanalysis and focusing on the ‘dirty nature’ so rarely considered in green studies, I show that these writers challenge the boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. Whereas urban sanitation, pollution and public health are well studied in nineteenth-century France, less interest has been shown in the agronomic debates in the 1840s–60s regarding the role of our own excrement in the ecological system. Socialist philosopher Pierre Leroux drew on these debates to develop an agricultural model called the ‘circulus’ reusing human faeces as fertilizer and Flaubert and Zola explore the possibilities of this system in Bouvard et Pécuchet (1880) and La Terre (1887). Ultimately, however, excrement is exposed in their work as a form of truth about our bodies and our place within the ecosystem.

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Recycling Excrement in Flaubert and Zola

Abstract

Bibliographical note

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this