Le Poignard et le Poison : Des Promenades stendhaliennes à l’image romanesque de la Rome zolienne

The article underlines the negative apprehension that Emile Zola feels towards the city of Rome, influenced as it is by the anthropological vision of two writer-travellers: Stendhal and Taine. Although it was a source of admiration during the Romantic era, Zolian writing was influenced by the image of the Italian capital as a place of murderous violence. The motifs of the knife and poison become inseparable from Zola's representations of the Roman social world. It is no longer a question of the naturalist writer celebrating passions, but of a critical and pessimistic discourse on the future of Rome.