Ecrire aux marges de la loi : Michel Zévaco, écrivain libertaire à la Belle Epoque ; Write at the margins of the law: Michel Ze éveaco, Freedom to Belle Epoque

Before he became a famous writer of cloak and dagger novels, Michel Zévaco (1860-1918), was, at the end of the 1880s, a journalist and involved in anarchist and libertarian movements. His uncompromising stance, in a politically complex and troubled period, is not unrelated to his experimental practice of fiction writing since 1890, the writing of which he made his profession in 1899. Straddling several worlds, the political commitment of the "margins", journalism, and the serial novel, Zévaco illustrates the problem of a whole generation of writers who admitted their sympathy towards anarchism and even were active militants: that of the articulation between art and political commitment, between literature and participation in power, and that of the relationship to the law and, finally, the responsibility of the writer. Zévaco was active in the press during the decade 1889-1899, and more particularly between 1889 and 1892: he embodied a brief interstice, a unique moment of balance in the history of the French press, between the press freedom law of 1881 and the "rogue" laws of 1893-94. By returning to a varied set of texts - militant articles, prison diaries, romans à clé, youth novels - this article portrays Zévaco as a tightrope walker who constantly plays the line between legality and illegality, along a trajectory that ranges from an unabashed political commitment to "deactivated political violence" in his novels. ; Michel Zévaco (1860-1918), avant d’être l’auteur de romans de cape et d’épée, était, à la fin des années 1880, journaliste et engagé dans les mouvances anarchistes et libertaires. Ses prises de position sans concession, dans une période politiquement complexe et troublée, ne sont pas sans lien avec sa pratique de l’écriture romanesque, qu’il expérimente dès 1890, et dont il fait sa profession à partir de 1899. A cheval entre plusieurs mondes, l’engagement politique des « marges », le journalisme, et le roman-feuilleton, Zévaco illustre la problématique de toute une génération ...