Emile Zola Ernest Alfred Vizetelly Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
Emile Zola was an elegant writer -- more elegant than his reputation as a political firebrand might suggest. Zola's most famous work was a newspaper article: his impassioned defense of imprisoned Captain Alfred Dreyfus, ""J'accuse."" "Rome" is the second volume of "The Three Cities (Les Trois Villes), " first published in 1896. The first volume tells of the troubled priest Pierre Froment's journey to "Lourdes, " hoping to find a cure for his spiritual doubts. In "Rome, " Pierre travels to the Holy City, hoping to persuade the Pope to approve of his Christian, socialist theories. The final...
Emile Zola was an elegant writer -- more elegant than his reputation as a political firebrand might suggest. Zola's most famous work was a newspaper a...
One of Zola's Three Cities Trilogy, Lourdes is a story surrounding the famous Catholic healing shrine in Southern France. Lourdes, in addition to telling the tales of many of the sick and dying pilgrims to the famous healing shrine, is also the story of doomed lovers, Pierre a priest who questions his faith, and his frail, sickly lover Marie de Geursaint, who, in finding a cure, perhaps, in the waters of Lourdes, becomes the book's heroine. Although Marie's triumphant cure is described glowingly, Pierre and the reader learn -- it is Marie who cured herself, not the holy waters of Lourdes...
One of Zola's Three Cities Trilogy, Lourdes is a story surrounding the famous Catholic healing shrine in Southern France. Lourdes, in addition to t...
L'Assomir tells the story of Gervaise Macquart. In Paris working as a laundress, she is abandoned with her young sons by her lover, Lantir. She marries a roofing engineer named Coupeau, saves enough money to open her own laundry and bears a daughter named Nana. But a fall from a roof badly injures Coupeau, and he takes to drink during his recovery. Lantier returns, Gervais suffers reverses including losing her shop, and joins Coupeau in a downward spiral of drink. Half of Zola's novels were a set of twenty called Les Rougon-Macquart, set in France's Second Empire.
L'Assomir tells the story of Gervaise Macquart. In Paris working as a laundress, she is abandoned with her young sons by her lover, Lantir. She mar...
The Fat and the Thin is the third novel of Zola's twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The Fat and the Thin is a study of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart. She has become prosperous, and increasingly selfish. Her brother-in-law Florent has escaped from penal servitude in Cayenne and lives for a short time in her house, but she becomes tired of his presence and ultimately denounces him to the police. As a critic put it: "It also embraces a powerful allegory, the prose song of the eternal battle...
The Fat and the Thin is the third novel of Zola's twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The Fat and the Thin is a study of the teeming life which s...
L'Assomir tells the story of Gervaise Macquart. In Paris working as a laundress, she is abandoned with her young sons by her lover, Lantir. She marries a roofing engineer named Coupeau, saves enough money to open her own laundry and bears a daughter named Nana. But a fall from a roof badly injures Coupeau, and he takes to drink during his recovery. Lantier returns, Gervais suffers reverses including losing her shop, and joins Coupeau in a downward spiral of drink. It traces two branches of a single family. Said Zola, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a...
L'Assomir tells the story of Gervaise Macquart. In Paris working as a laundress, she is abandoned with her young sons by her lover, Lantir. She mar...
Emile Zola's His Masterpiece is the author's most autobiographical novel, based in part on his boyhood friendship with the painter Paul Cezanne. The painter of His Masterpiece, Claude Lantier, has much in common with Cezanne, as well as Manet -- the controversial painter of this period whose "realistic" work in some ways mirrors Zola's writing. Claude's friend Pierre Sandoz, the clerk and writer of the novel, is based closely on Zola himself. Not as fortunate in life as was Manet, Claude Lantier's art is misunderstood and he struggles emotionally and financially. From his ill-fated romance...
Emile Zola's His Masterpiece is the author's most autobiographical novel, based in part on his boyhood friendship with the painter Paul Cezanne. Th...
A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Therese Raquin was denounced as pornography on its publication in 1867. "Putrid literature" was how Louis Ulbach described the novel in a contemporary review. Zola defended himself against these attacks in his preface to the second edition, in which he outlined his aim to produce a new, "scientific" form of realism. The novel marks a crucial step in Zola's development and is a major early work of Naturalism.
In his introduction to Therese Raquin, Brian Nelson places the novel in its cultural, intellectual and artistic...
A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Therese Raquin was denounced as pornography on its publication in 1867. "Putrid literature" was how Lou...
On July 19th, 1898, Emile Zola arrived in England after fleeing imprisonment in France. He was to spend eleven months in self-imposed exile because of his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. During this time, the family of his English translator, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, took care of his everyday needs. While in Britain, Zola wrote a short text entitled 'Pages d'exil, ' in which he talked about his feelings regarding England, exile, and other matters. An avid photographer, Zola also took pictures of his surroundings that were left with the Vizetelly family when he returned to...
On July 19th, 1898, Emile Zola arrived in England after fleeing imprisonment in France. He was to spend eleven months in self-imposed exile because...
The first of a series of more than twenty novels, The Fortune of the Rougons presents the passions and conflicts of two families -- one wealthy and aiming at the aristocracy, the other working-class and in desperate poverty -- in a French village in the years leading up to Napoleon III's coup against the weak French republic and the triumph of his Second Empire. The great political tides of their time flow in, mingling national rivalries with the personal and familial passions of the one town and two families. Zola ties together the triumph of schemers on the national level with the...
The first of a series of more than twenty novels, The Fortune of the Rougons presents the passions and conflicts of two families -- one wealthy and...
Raised alongside her sickly cousin, Therese lives the quietest of lives. Yet something impetuous and wild stirs within her -- as she learns of herself during moments of escape into the countryside. But now the family is in Paris, taking over a mercer's shop in the dingy Arcade of the Pont Neuf. To appease the aunt who has cared for her, she marries her pale, nerve-wracked cousin. Then a schoolmate of her husband's appears -- almost his complete opposite, with full voice, jovial laughter -- and a strapping build that givers her nervous pangs to contemplate . . . And a new Therese, one her...
Raised alongside her sickly cousin, Therese lives the quietest of lives. Yet something impetuous and wild stirs within her -- as she learns of hers...