French Literature Reviews - 2026

Alexandre Lansmans, Le roman délétère. De Nana à Monsieur de Phocas
Novel and Narrative Prose

“If he were to write it, he would make his novel of putrefaction pulse with life…!” exclaimed Joris-Karl Huysmans in 1891 regarding Jean Lorrain. At a fin de siècle haunted by the theme of degeneration, the “novel of putrefaction” emerged as a “book waiting to be written.” From Zola and Lorrain to Paul Bourget, Oscar Wilde, and Octave Mirbeau, among others, the corruptor became a stock character in the fiction of the era, standing alongside the decadent aesthete and the femme fatale. Yet, within an increasingly autonomous literary field that had largely ceased to believe in the corrupting power of bad books, what was this noxious novel if not an aberration? Positioned at the crossroads of the history of ideas, the study of social discourse, and thematic criticism, this essay posits that such novels actually constituted a reaction against decadence.

Alexandre Lansmans is a scholar of Romance languages and is currently completing his doctoral dissertation in semi-rhetoric at the University of Liège.

By examining works from prominent fin-de-siecle authors such as Emile Zola, Jean Lorrain, and Oscar Wilde, this study investigates how late-nineteenth-century literature engaged with pervasive anxieties surrounding cultural degeneration. The book traces the emergence of the corruptor as a prominent archetype in narrative prose, placing these texts within the broader context of aesthetic movements, changing social discourses, and the growing autonomy of the literary field during a period marked by profound intellectual shifts.

This scholarly essay will appeal to researchers, graduate students, and readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature, literary theory, and the history of ideas. It offers valuable perspectives on how writers of the era paradoxically utilized themes of decay and corruption to mount a subtle reaction against contemporary notions of decadence, illuminating the complex relationship between artistic production, moral panic, and the shifting boundaries of fiction.