NATURALISM & NECROPHILIA

Part of my research and preparation for the new book on Naturalist theatre is to force myself to get the ideas into some kind of shape by offering papers about sections of the book. Yesterday it was the turn of a chapter I am planning to write on Naturalism's relationship with death. The focus I gave it was tracing the imagery and tropes of necrophilia through the work. I begin with the notorious case of Sgt Bertrand, the most (in)famous necrophiliac of the nineteenth century and I trace the development and persistence of this imagery in French literature through the 1800s. I show the way in which European psychiatry used the Bertrand affaire to stake out a much-enlarged area of disciplinary responsibility and I make a case for this having an impact on the way in which authorship was understood. I look at the experience and understanding of death in nineteenth century France: child mortality, the problem of dénatalité, health crises (cholera, venereal disease), the bloody century after 1789 and the semaine sanglante, miasma theory, Pasteur's ideas, and the fears of degeneration. Finally I show how the tropes of necrophilia infected the reception and understanding of Naturalism, with images of putrefaction and necrophilia threading through the criticism ('La Littérature Putride', 'pourriture', 'l'éloquence du charnier', 'malodorous ... loathsome and fetid ... almost putrid ... literary carrion'), criticisms to which Zola had to respond by explicitly denying he was a necrophiliac. But I end by showing that there are contradictions within the scientific and Naturalist project around authorship, exteriority, and pathology.

It was a pleasingly well-attended session; the two other speakers were Claire Borody (University of Winnipeg) and Maria Heinzer (University of Berne), who both gave stimulating papers, and it was chaired by Claire Cochrane (Worcester University). The theme of the panel was 'Rethinking Theatre History' which was very loose, but we seemed to find things to say to each other. The theme of IFTR (International Federation of Theatre Research) was 'Theatre & Stratification'. I resisted the temptation to talk in my paper theatre history as a kind of necro-activity, digging through the layers to embrace the past. Well done me.