Emile Zola

Paper Summary:

Emile Zola was a French critic and writer, better known for his extreme opposition of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his fiery social commentaries against society in the 19th century. The paper shows how Zola was intensely interested in portraying life as he saw it without romanticizing about some of its aspects. It describes how initially his works did not receive much public acclaim but after the publication of "Therese Raquin" in 1867, he became a well-known literary figure in France. The paper shows that from 1871 to 1893, Zola focused on the publication of what is now known as the Rougon-Macquart series. Under this series, he came up with what are considered some truly amazing novels including "L'Assommoir" (1877), "Nana" (1880), "Germinal" (1885) and "La Bete Humaine" in 1890. The paper also discusses Zola's involvement in the Alfred Dreyfus affair.

From the Paper:

"This brings us to an important feature of his works i.e. naturalism. From the proposal above, it is clear that Zola was a naturalist and believed in presented his stories in the light of his definition of naturalism. Zola was the pioneer of a new creed of naturalism, which focused on reality and its true depiction. His kind of naturalism was based on true depiction of life, as it exists. Not much was added to or subtracted from what the author observed during his research on various topics. Everything was presented in its real form with intense focus on human emotions and thoughts. For example at one point ion Germinal, the author used the technique of naturalism to foreshadow the ending. Characters appear almost real and thus their thoughts and emotions can be related to. There is no artificiality or shallowness in their portrayal neither is there an element of romanticism anywhere."

More papers on Emile Zola:

• Book Review # 108560 : "Emile Zola's "Nana"
• Analytical Essay # 5550 : "Emile Zola's "The Ladies Paradise"
• Analytical Essay # 66380 : "Emile Zola's "Ladies Paradise"

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