Henri Béraud and Gabriel Chevallier are the most known lyonese writers in the first half of the century, and they are at the same time two rather distinct characters corresponding to the literary creation that accompanies the change from the XIXth to the XXth century. Although both were born in Lyon, they come from country families ; but the former, which has always been proud of his plebeian origin, undertakes to build up the mythic story of the country common people's historic rise, concluding it by a failure, whereas the latter, son of a somewhat fallen notable line, will turn his personal experience of cultured but downgraded bourgeois in a bitter but funny satire of the country way of life. The amazing success of the book, that is his main work, is clearly the expression of the growing folklorization of the countryside. Finally, and even in their private destiny, they are two contrasting representations of the non-elitist French opinion's ambiguousness during the period between the two World Wars.