Cet ouvrage est sous-tendu par une problematique precise: comment est-ce que Julio Cortazar a ecrit Rayuela (Buenos Aires, 1963); Georges Perec, La Vie mode d emploi (Paris, 1978); et Yolande Villemaire, La Vie en prose (Montreal, 1980) ? Il s inscrit dans la mouvance des travaux actuels en critique genetique, lesquels s interessent a la genese de textes litteraires des XIXe, XXe et XXIe siecles en deplacant l etude de ces textes vers celle de leur avant-texte (plans, scenarios, esquisses, notes, brouillons, etats successifs, mises au net ou epreuves corrigees). La visee...

This book examines how eight eighteenth-century French theorists Maillet, Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire addressed evolutionism. Each thinker laid down a building block that would eventually open the door to the mutability of species and a departure from the long-held belief that the chain of beings is fixed. This book describes how the philosophes established a triune relationship among contemporary scientific discoveries, random creationism propelled by the motive and conscious properties of matter, and the notion of the chain of being, along...