Abstract: The category of the novelistic - a synonym of falsity and, for Zola, related to a model of novel that he rejects - is generally condemned. However, the novelistic, constitutive of the novel, is appealed to in La Fortune des Rougon. It represents a rich reservoir of fictive potentialities. And, above all, it aids the axiological polarity of the novel by convoking the register of the emotions.
