Rougon-Macquart

One of the most important, though controversial, French novelists of the late nineteenth century, and founder of the Realist movement, was Émile Zola (1840-1902). He was the most important example of the literary genre of naturalism, and an integral part of developing theatrical naturalism. "The Kill" is the second book in Zola's "Les Rougon-Macquart", a twenty-volume series about a fictional family during the Second French Empire. The Kill, a second...

Zola dramatically shaped the course of literature through the development of naturalism, characterized by the unsentimental and realistic portrayal of class in French society. His twenty novel cycle "Les Rougon-Macquart" is epic in scope, often drawing comparisons to the prolific output of Balzac. Here in the fourth installment of that epic collection we find "The Conquest of Plassans," which centers on the fictional Provencal town of Plassans. The...

"A Love Episode", Une page d'amour is the eighth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola, set among the petite bourgeoisie in Second Empire suburban Paris. It was first serialized between December 11, 1877, and April 4, 1878, in Le Bien public, before being published in novel form by Charpentier in April 1878. The central character of the novel is Hélène Grandjean née Mouret (b. 1824), first introduced briefly in La fortune des Rougon....

The fourteenth novel in a twenty book series collectively entitled, "Les Rougon-Macquart, L'Œuvre" was first translated into English in 1886, the title having since been rendered "The Masterpiece". Set in France's Second Empire, the story of naturalist painter Claude Lantier is believed to be a highly fictionalized account of Zola's friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne. The fictional artist of Zola's Bohemian world, Lantier, strives to complete...

Emile Zola's novel Le Rêve (1888) is a love idyll between a poor embroideress and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family set against the background of a sleepy cathedral town in northern France. A far cry from the seething, teeming world evoked in Zola's best-known novels, it may at first seem a strange interlude between La Terre and La Bête Humaine in the 20-volume sequence known as the Rougon-Macquart cycle. However, belying its appearance as...

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola[1] (* 2. April 1840 in Paris; † 29. September 1902 ebenda) war ein französischer Schriftsteller und Journalist. Zola gilt als einer der großen französischen Romanciers des 19. Jahrhunderts und als Leitfigur und Begründer der gesamteuropäischen literarischen Strömung des Naturalismus. Zugleich war er ein sehr aktiver Journalist, der sich auf einer gemäßigt linken Position am politischen Leben beteiligte....