Therese Raquin - Softcover

Zola, Emile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1475206216 ISBN 13: 9781475206210

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Zola’s 20 Rougon-Macquart novels are a panoramic account of the Second French Empire. They are the story of a family principally between the years 1851 and 1871. These 20 novels contain over 300 major characters, who descend from the two family lines of the Rougons and Macquarts and who are related. In Zola’s words, which are the subtitle of the Rougon-Macquart series, they are "L’Histoire naturelle et sociale d’une famille sous le Second Empire"("The natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire"). Most of the Rougon-Macquart novels were written during the French Third Republic. To an extent, attitudes and value judgments may have been superimposed on that picture with the wisdom of hindsight. The débâcle in which the reign of Napoleon III of France culminated may have imparted a note of decadence to certain of the novels about France in the years before that disastrous defeat. Nowhere is the doom laden image of the Second Empire so clearly seen as in Nana, which culminates in echoes of the Franco-Prussian War (and hence by implication of the French defeat). Even in novels dealing with earlier periods of Napoleon III’s reign the picture of the Second Empire is sometimes overlaid with the imagery of catastrophe. In the Rougon-Macquart novels, provincial life tends to be overshadowed by Zola’s preoccupation with the capital. Only in his picture of rural working-class life in La Terre and in the corresponding picture of industrial working-class life in Germinal, does Zola convincingly escape from Paris into the provinces. The life of provincial towns is an even more noticeable omission from his achievement, for only in Le Rêve and in the twice repeated picture of Plassans (modeled upon his childhood home, Aix-en-Provence) does he achieve such a portrait (La Fortune des Rougon, La Conquête de Plassans). Le Docteur Pascal has the same setting but cannot properly be termed a novel of provincial life. La Débâcle, the military novel is set for the most part in country districts of eastern France; its dénouement takes place in the capital during the civil war leading to the suppression of the Paris Commune. Like Balzac, Zola’s imagination was roused by Paris and all that the capital represented to him.

About this title

Review:

"I love this because it's the story of how you can't escape the inevitabilities of love and it's just a fantastic piece of writing." --Sue Perkins, "Express
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"By merging elements of the gothic and tragic with a study of petit-bourgeois banality, Zola created a work of enduring fascination." --"Observer

" "It was attacked by critics of the day as stinking filth and a foul sewer. Little wonder, then, that it became an instant bestseller and I'll admit I was completely riveted by its melodramatics from start to finish." --"Daily Mail
"

"In Adam Thorpe's stark new translation, ["Therese Raquin"] is revealed in all its queasy glory as a shockingly effective literary mash-up of pulp fiction, melodrama and grimly unflinching social realism." --"Metro"

About the Author:

?mile Zola was a French writer who is recognized as an exemplar of literary naturalism and for his contributions to the development of theatrical naturalism. Zola s best-known literary works include the twenty-volume Les Rougon-Macquart, an epic work that examined the influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution on French society through the experiences of two families, the Rougons and the Macquarts. Other remarkable works by Zola include Contes ? Ninon, Les Myst?res de Marseille, and Th?r?se Raquin.

In addition to his literary contributions, Zola played a key role in the Dreyfus Affair of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His newspaper article J Accuse accused the highest levels of the French military and government of obstruction of justice and anti-semitism, for which he was convicted of libel in 1898. After a brief period of exile in England, Zola returned to France where he died in 1902. ?mile Zola is buried in the Panth?on alongside other esteemed literary figures Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1475206216
• ISBN 13: 9781475206210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206