Les jeux d’enfants dans Les Rougon-Macquart
Children’s Games in Les Rougon-Macquart

Summary/Abstract: This article examines children’s games in Les Rougon-Macquart while relying on a typology that includes toys, symbolic plays, and a children’s ball. In addition to their educational and recreational functions, childhood games play various narrative roles, such as constructing a referential universe, creating key moments in the plot, exploring the complexity of child and parental psychology, parent/child relationships and much more. Furthermore, the author, Émile Zola, employs toys and children’s games to inform his reflections on the joint influence of heredity and environment on the fates of characters, in alignment with the principles of the naturalist movement. This approach offers valuable insights into how Zola utilizes children’s games as narrative and symbolic elements within his grand literary tapestry.

• Details
• Contents