Le lyrisme de l’évolution : les rêveries sur le vivant de Charles Nodier et de Camille Flammarion

Long before the first translations of Charles Darwin’s works, evolutionary thought had been developing in France thanks to such authors as Georges‐Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Charles Bonnet and Jean‐Baptiste de Lamarck.  Although Georges Cuvier’s fixism and creationism remained the dominant scientific paradigm throughout the 19th century, writers drew their inspiration from evolutionary thought, subjecting it to lyrical and often parareligious interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Charles Nodier in his essay “De la palingénésie humaine et de la résurrection” and Camille Flammarion in his short stories “Clairs de lune” reinterpret different theories of evolution.