The phenomenon of the crowd in Zola: sociological contribuiton to the representation of the crowd in the work of Émile Zola

This dissertation treats of the crowd in the work of Émile Zola, especially in his novel Germinal. The objective of the dissertation is not only to analyse the representation of the crowd in this novel and to classify it, but also to reveal the similarities and differences between this representation and the "scientific" observations of "crowd psychologists" at the end of the 19th century, Scipio Sighele, Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon. We have chosen, as a method of analysis, to combine a close reading of the novel with a sociological approach by using Bourdieu's construct of literary field and Bakhtin's chronotope. At the end of our literary analysis we try to look at Germinal in a larger context and observe the social determinations which had an impact on it. The point is to try to locate the writer among the other contemporary writers and explain his literary choices from this position. The depiction of the crowd in the work of Émile Zola, contrary to the approach of Sighele, Tarde and Le Bon, who agreed on the fact that the crowd presents a danger for the society, is more nuanced. Although we can find also a negative interpretation of the crowd in Germinal (mainly in the scenes full of violence of the marching crowd), as well as the same women-like emotionality and instability, though there is the..