Abstract: There appear to have been about forty reviews of À rebours when it was first published. This article, however, focuses only on the reception of five antimodern authors who ask the following question: can we consider À rebours a Catholic work? The contradictory answers they offer entail barely masked ideological issues: what is in question is either condemning a novel deemed immoral or, on the contrary, drawing it toward the beyond, in order to better uncouple it from an abhorred naturalism.
