Abstract:
The works of Kourouma and Zola have been studied by many scholars, in
diverse scholarly works with greater possibility of enriching the areas of study on
the works. Thus, the approach to this study, 'Recit et Realisme dans En attendant Ie
vote des biUes sauvages de Kourouma et Germinal de Zola'. is but not, from an
exclusively narratological perspective. The study examines the manifest links
between narrative and the concept of realism that is an aesthetic effort to bridge the
gap between fiction (imagination) and reality (truth/fact). Based on a critical
examination of textual data collected mainly from Zola's Germinal and
Kourouma's En attendant Ie vote des betes sauvages, the study establishes the fact
that the two novelists, through a harmonious combination of rhetorical and
narratological tools, reproduce historical events without producing history
textbooks. The aesthetic artistry of the two novelists is clearly demonstrated in their successful harmonization of narrative fiction and fiction-based historical events in
their texts. The study tries not only to unearth but also to elucidate the rhetorical
and narratological constructs and their various components that the texts are made
of and shed light on the correlation between them as a harmonious textual
architecture geared toward realism. In other words, it determines the structure of the
works and the stories, thus, capturing the full import of the titles and the
relationship between the narrative novelties of Zola and Kourouma. The study
affirms the position that realism coexists with fiction in the two texts. It is the
aesthetic ingredient that makes the distinction between a narrative text founded on
historic events and a history textbook.
