D’une chronique de la « tache originelle » au « roman des origines »

The strange coincidence of the fall of Napoléon III and the first serials of La Fortune des Rougon, during the summer of 1870, conferred a documentary and political dimension on the novel of “origins” which in fact had already been assigned to it by an article of 29 August 1869 in La Tribune. Rarely had a novel and its obsessive motifs been programmed to such an extent in a column. The themes of the coup d’État, the call of history, and original sin ran throughout the article and inscribed themselves within the final œuvre.