Through their massive commitment in the Dreyfus Affair, French writers have not only redefined the ways of commitment, they have also used their writing as a weapon to defend their political cause. From the articles written during the battle to the novels based on the Affair, the Dreyfus Affair has thus become a litterary object, questionning the frontier between History and Fiction. The Affair was a case of collective awareness linked to an underlying ideological debate. This litterary battle was born before the actual Affair began : the writers defined the main guidelines of the ideological debate and employed the means of collective mobilization, creating the background in which the Dreyfus Affair took place. During the battle itself, they privately expressed how much the Affair turned the litterary world upside down, leaving little room for dissident voices. The collective aspect of the mobilization has moreover directly influenced the Dreyfus littérature : creating between the lines of the debate an ideological and rhetorical unity, French writers have built this public controversy over common references. Influenced by this collective litterary vision, the fiction works based on the Affair gave it a litterary posterity at the crossroads of different sensitivities
