Introduction

The Introduction lays out the scope and methodology of the book, which covers fours authors’ - Émile Zola, Ferdinand Brunetière, Saint-Georges de Bouhélier and Henry Céard - careers as literary critics before addressing their political engagement in the Dreyfus Affair. I propose a method entitled ‘microhistories of ideas’ to analyze them, which combines intense focus on individual authors with longitudinal attention to the unit-ideas that recur and recombine in their writings over time. As a result, it becomes evident how each writer drew on existing literary ideas to formulate a Dreyfusard or anti-Dreyfusard discourse during the Affair. The method’s flexibility should make it adaptable to other writers and historical moments in the future.