Abstract: The Saint-Mittre area and Viorne are two spaces on the margins of Plassans, the town invented as the place of origin for the Rougons and Macquarts. However, they play a major role in the construction of the plot and also a personal aesthetic of description. The novelist profits, in effect, from the descriptive passages of these marginal spaces in order to underline the transition of old uses of the narrator figure towards a more personal way of legitimising created spaces.
