Number 3 (September 2004) © Society of Dix-Neuviémistes 2004 Love and Epistemology in French Fiction of the Fin-de-Siècle: in Search of the Pathological Unknown Peter Cryle The latter part of the nineteenth century was, in France most particularly, a time when the business of medical science and the concerns of the novel were often remarkably close. Sometimes that closeness took the form of bitter rivalry. Max Nordau, whose primary reference is to the medical ‘truth’ of degeneration theory, tends to make writers of fiction the primary targets of his fierce polemics. For those who share Nordau’s frame of reference, literature is disturbing on two counts. It is both an occasion for degeneration to manifest itself, and a means of disseminating degenerate thinking. But, as Stephen Arata has pointed out, degeneration theorists only paid such critical attention to literature because they saw it as “the preeminent human activity” (177). Whether or not the champions of science wished it, medical science and literature shared assumptions and ambitions. The two did not just follow “parallel” paths, to use a clichéd metaphor of intellectual history. 1 Discursive transplants and generic transpositions allowed medical notions to shape fiction and, it could be argued, fiction to model some possibilities for scientific thought, albeit in stylised and approximate ways. Two fairly recent studies have drawn attention to this cultural phenomenon, and to some of its discursive effects. Jann Matlock, focusing on the middle of the nineteenth century, follows the themes of prostitution and hysteria from one field to the other, arguing that “the concerns of the new aliéniste profession — ranging from monomania to hysteria — had increasingly become matters of public fascination and literary convention” (164). Janet Beizer, while also dealing with hysteria, concentrates on the latter part of the century, which is arguably a time when the phenomenon becomes richer and more complex. My approach to these matters has something in common with Beizer’s, in that I am seeking to understand discursive interference and collaboration through the study of literary texts, rather than by a broad examination of the historical milieu. In what follows, I shall focus on a particular kind of novel as a place of discursive interaction. Having begun with Zola, I shall move quite quickly to a larger and less distinguished corpus that includes works by Jules Claretie and Charles Richet (Epheyre), who were active as both doctors and as novelists. 2 The corpus consists of novels published during the period 1885-1905 that often bear on their title pages the generic appellation roman de mœurs or roman contemporain. Their authors tend to be poorly remembered today, although some continue to dwell in the margins of literary history as petits naturalistes. 3 My topic, in any case, is not so much their individual qualities as their