Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolize the call for freedom ...from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted "Germinal! Germinal!"While it is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, Germinal is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigor and power in this new translation. It is also the thirteenth book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, which celebrates its centenary in October 1993 with a new film version of Germinal starring Gerard Depardieu.
Today's spectrum of research in literary studies is characterized by a sense of openness to the methods of comparative literature and cultural studies, along with a wide range of interdisciplinary ...crossover. The spectrum Literaturwissenschaft series is intended to be a forum for this pluralistic new model of literary studies. It presents papers that are informed by methodologically innovative, frequently comparative approaches, and whose findings are of importance well beyond the narrow boundaries of national philological horizons.
This historical and critical study of Zola's Fécondité contributes much to an understanding of how the novel came to be written and of its achievements.
Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Emile Zola explores the genealogy of modern day terrorism through a close study of the anarchist figure in three of Emile Zola's novels: ...Germinal, Paris, and Travail. The study links the crisis of representation registered at the end of the 19th century with the rise of terrorism embodied in the bomb-throwing anarchist. It thereby traces Zola's evolving thoughts on anarchy from the terrorist to the humanitarian reformer, from class warfare to a peaceful artisan commune, from a naturalist depiction of an elusive reality to a utopian writing fleeing the contingencies of the historical. The volume brings together aesthetic, political, urban, and scientific debates of Belle Epoque France and it will thus be of great interest not only to Zola scholars, but also to students of late 19th-century politics and art.
Filmmakers have drawn inspiration from the pages of Emile Zola (1840—1902) from the earliest days of cinema. The ever-growing number of adaptations they have produced spans eras, genres, languages, ...and styles. In spite of the diversity of these approaches, numerous critics regard them as inferior copies of a superior textual original. But key novels by Zola resist this critical approach to adaptation. Both at the level of characterization and in terms of their own textual inheritance, they question the very possibility of origin, be it personal or textual. In the light of this questioning, the cinematic versions created from Zola's texts merit critical re-evaluation. Far from being facile copies of the nineteenth-century novelist's works, these films assess their own status as adaptations, playing with both notions of artistic creation and their own artistic act.
Paul Alexis was a novelist, journalist, and dramatist, one of thenaturalistes, and a friend of Emile Zola. This volume brings together for the first time the 229 letters still in existence from him ...to Zola.
In Real Time David F. Bell explores the decisive impact the accelerated movement of people and information had on the fictions of four giants of French realism--Balzac, Stendhal, Dumas, and Zola. ..._x000B__x000B_Nineteenth-century technological advances radically altered the infrastructure of France, changing the ways ordinary citizens--and literary characters--viewed time, space, distance, and speed. The most influential of these advances included the improvement of the stagecoach, the growth of road and canal networks leading to the advent of the railway, and the increasing use of mail, and of the optical telegraph. Citing examples from a wide range of novels and stories, Bell demonstrates the numerous ways in which these trends of acceleration became not just literary devices and themes but also structuring principles of the novels themselves. _x000B__x000B_Beginning with both the provincial and the Parisian communications networks of Balzac, Bell proceeds to discuss the roles of horses and optical telegraphs in Stendhal and the importance of domination of communication channels to the characters of Dumas, whose Count of Monte-Cristo might be seen as the ultimate fictional master of this accelerated culture. Finally, Bell analyzes the cinematic vision created by the arrival of the railroad, as depicted by Zola in La Bete Humaine.
This historical and critical study of Zola's Fecondite contributes much to an understanding of how the novel came to be written and of its achievements.
The spectacular development of early consumer society in Britain, France and the United States had a profound impact on constructions of femininity and masculinity, and commercial and cultural values ...in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on novels by Theodore Dreiser, George Gissing and Emile Zola, Just Looking , first published in 1985, addresses itself to a central paradox of the period: the perceived antithesis of the terms "commerce" and "culture" which emerged at a time which saw the actual drawing together of commercial and cultural practices.
Drawing on structural, psychoanalytic and Marxist-feminist theory, Rachel Bowlby retrieves a relatively neglected literary area for contemporary political and theoretical concerns, re-establishing the naturalist novel as a rich source for feminists, literary theorists and cultural historians.
'Well researched, excellently written, highly intelligent and of central relevance to current literary-theoretical preoccupations.’ – Terry Eagleton
‘Written at that frontier or cross-roads where literary study and sociological or political study are being brought together, this is an important book, one remarkable for its penetration and economy.’ – J. Hillis Miller
1. Introduction 2. Commerce and Femininity 3. Making up Women: Gissing’s Eve’s Ransom 4. Starring: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie 5. "Traffic in Her Desires": Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames 6. Culture and the Book Business 7. Making it: Gissing’s New Grub Street 8. The Artist as Adman: Dreiser’s The "Genius" 9. Working: Zola’s L’Oeuvre
