Fortune of the Rougons, The (Rougon-Macquart) - Softcover

Zola, Emile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595690107 ISBN 13: 9781595690104

Publisher: Mondial, 2004

Synopsis

The idyll of Miette and Silvère is a very touching one, and quite in accord with the conditions of life prevailing in Provence at the period Emile Zola selects for his narrative. Miette is a frank child of nature; Silvère, her lover, in certain respects foreshadows, a quarter of a century in advance, the Abbé Pierre Fromont of "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." "The Fortune of the Rougons" is the initial volume of the Rougon-Macquart series. Though it was by no means M. Zola's first essay in fiction, it was undoubtedly his first great bid for genuine literary fame, and the foundation of what must necessarily be regarded as his life-work. The idea of writing the "natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire," extending to a score of volumes, was doubtless suggested to M. Zola by Balzac's immortal "Comédie Humaine." He was twenty-eight years of age when this idea first occurred to him; he was fifty-three when he at last sent the manuscript of his concluding volume, "Dr. Pascal," to the press. He had spent five-and-twenty years in working out his scheme, persevering with it doggedly and stubbornly, whatever rebuffs he might encounter, whatever jeers and whatever insults might be directed against him by the ignorant, the prejudiced, and the hypocritical. Truth was on the march and nothing could stay it; even as, at the present hour, its march, if slow, none the less continues athwart another and a different crisis of the illustrious novelist's career.

About this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mondial
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1595690107
• ISBN 13: 9781595690104
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Dhar Uday K.
• Number of pages: 328