'Ceci tuera cela': The Cathedral in the Marketplace

Hugo's influence on Zola and the "impure" brand of naturalism Zola practiced as opposed to the one he professed, are two related topics that have often been the focus of critical commentary. An analysis of the complex symbolic relationship between the church of Saint Eustche and the Parisian Halles in Zola's novel, Le Ventre de Paris, shows that the novel is both a parodic rewriting of Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, the epitome of Romantic novels, and a special "hybrid" type of novel modeled on Notre-Dame de Paris itself, actively entering into direct stylistic competition with Hugo's novel. Thus the relationship between church and market can be used to focus on the conglomerate stylistic configuration of Zola's novel, and also to address questions of his originality, and modernity, illuminating from within the nature of Hugo's relationship to Zola and Zola's to "modern," naturalist art. (IMZ-J)