According to the usual definition, a rough draft [brouillon] designates, very broadly, a working manuscript written with the intention of correcting it for use in the composition or final polishing of a text. To take only its literary sense, this definition has the advantage of having a wide application and, to make up for it, the defect, under such loose specifications, of a reduced intelligibility. This explains why the word is frequently used and why a certain embarrassment often accompanies this use for philologists and literary historians enamored of terminological rigor. The difficulty is all the more palpable in that a new breed of researchers–specialists in literary genetics–have recently brought the rough draft to center stage by emphasizing the remarkable benefit that the critical study of texts could derive by recourse to these genetic documents, in which the work of art becomes interpretable through the very movement that gave birth to it.