THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE, OF ANATOLE FRANCE: A DRAMA OF THE DILEMMAS OF HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of the Anatole France novel (named François-Anatole Thibault - 1844-1924) entitled The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, member of the Institute, originally published in 1881. It seeks to raise questions about the modern experience in the late nineteenth century in France, through this novel. The text is part of a doctorate project which is underway, and which has as its central focus to understand how the novel by Marcel Proust (1871-1922) entitled A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (originally published in Paris between 1913 and 1927) have been consolidated in the context of its publication as a witness, memory and representation of the Belle Époque parisian. In this analysis of Anatole France novel, stands out the figure of the main character, Sylvestre Bonnard, as paradigmatic of a trajectory of a scholar-intellectual, historian and philologist who seeks all his life find the French origins. Bonnard is represented by  Anatole France as a scholar who is aging  throughout the nineteenth century, that during his search will gradually losing faith in the very activity that exercises: the historical and philological studies. He appears in the novel as a symbol of an age that felt deeply the loss of confidence in the modernization, on reason, in the science and positivism.