Scientific anticipation novels at the turn of the nineteenth century (1860-1940) – ANTICIPATION

This interdisciplinary project, at the intersection of literature history and science history, proposes to analyze the birth of a new genre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the scientific anticipation novel. This research aims at understanding a founding moment, when the bases of a relationship to science (which still structures our current representations of science and technology) is established. With the collaboration of specialists of novel, press, popular literature and science history, the aim will be to understand the intellectual, ideological and aesthetical issues brought by these anticipation novels. In addition, thanks to a republishing work and the online publication of texts, this research program will highlight fiction corpuses that are now little read and studied though they were privileged vectors to question scientific changes in the media culture of the turn of the nineteenth century.
The goal of this collaborative research will be to model the deployment of the anticipation novel over a period of eighty years, between 1860 and 1940. Indeed, this project aims to take a new look at a question of literature history and novel poetics through the use of new analysis methods. The research team will analyze a corpus of about 600 works, thanks to the collective development of a database (which will be included in a public web site). This case study will hence be analyzed and evaluated as a theoretical model for understanding a genre. Beyond the specifics of the considered corpus, the analysis protocol and its use of software tools specific to "digital humanities" will then be applicable to other literary corpuses.
An internal analysis of the texts will focus in particular on three research directions. Editorial media will be analyzed so as to develop a first definition of the genre through its material study, including the exploration of the visual component of the genre (illustrations). The second direction will be to produce a theory of the anticipation novel genre through a poetics-based study of the corpus and an analysis of the critical reception of works. Finally, the third research direction will interrogate the epistemological and ideological issues of the novels.
Along with this scientific work, the research program will lead dissemination and valuation actions towards a wider audience: two exhibits about anticipation novels will be proposed, as well as the projection of movies adapting the novels (1900-1940).