Summary: Flaubert’s only historical novel, Salammbô, was published in 1862, a year before the first of Verne’s ‘Voyages Extraordinaire’, Cing semaines en ballon. For Jameson, this moment when the historical novel ceased to be ‘functional’ was the moment of the emergence of scince fiction. For Bourdieu, by contrast, the moment of Flaubert was that of the emergence of the modern ‘literary field’. This paper will analyse the place of science fiction in the genesis and structure of the modern literary field.
