![]() At their best, they are extraordinary feats of observation at their worst, they seem to me little more than melodramatic forays into soft porn. ![]() I must admit to having mixed feelings about the success or otherwise of Zola’s works. ![]() Zola is perhaps best known for “J’Accuse!,” a public letter written in 1898 in defense of the imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus and condemning the anti-Semitism of the government of the day, but he was also the author of a monumental series of novels, “Les Rougon-Macquart,” in which he conceived a form of realistic writing known as naturalism, turning the novel into a scientific laboratory for the study of human behavior. ![]() Note to readers: You may choose to read this analysis of Émile Zola ‘s Germinal here or listen to it on the audio file at the end of the article.Īs a companion to last week’s discussion of Gustave Flaubert’s famous novel Madame Bovary, it seems appropriate to talk this week about a work by another 19th-century French novelist whose name is often placed beside Flaubert’s: Émile Zola. An ad for Germinal, which was serialized in the literary periodical Gil Blas, 1884. ![]()
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