Abstract: This article examines the relationship between fiction and erudition—in this case, fiction and historical writing—from a macrogenetic perspective. It takes a look back at Merimée’s career, where erudition seems to take over the reins from fiction and proposes a typology of the devices fiction uses to resist the “scholarly turn”. It then examines one of these devices by returning to the genesis of Carmen and its close links with the writing of the Histoire de don Pèdre Ier, roi de Castille.
