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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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French novelist Émile Zola, noted for his championship of the Naturalist novel, has been one of the most adapted authors in world literature. There have been approximately 80 film adaptations of his late 19th century novels and short stories, many of which occurred during the silent era of international film production (1895–1927). While the aesthetic elements of Zola’s fiction continue to appeal to international cinema, the author’s thematic naturalism and his "scientific methodology" have provided an ideological framework that incorporates art, science and history into the many cinematic adaptations of his work.

This collection of essays, contributed by scholars of French literature and film, explores the dynamic relationship between Zola’s fiction and its film adaptations, examining critically significant cinematic adaptations of Zola’s novels from a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives. The 13 essays discuss the adaptation of Zola’s works within the limitations of the silent cinema; the challenges posed by film censorship and the notoriety of the author’s naturalist text; the ideological inflection given to Zola’s working class narratives; and Zola’s representation of women. Zola’s works are placed within their respective historical contexts, as the essays address encoded anti–Nazi sentiment in films produced under the German occupation of France during World War II and the French Communist Party’s reception of the filmic adaptation of Germinal. Other adapted works addressed in these chapters include La Terre, Nana, La Bête humaine, Au Bonheur des Dames, Thérèse Raquin, Gervaise and Pot-Bouille. ... Read more

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This is a new introduction to Zola's masterpiece, published amid controversy in 1876-7. L'Assommoir is analyzed as a social and political novel, as a representative work of literary naturalism, and in the context of its repercussions in the history of the novel. Professor Baguley investigates its complex and sometimes ambiguous themes, its literary structures and its technical innovativeness. He provides a synthesis of the best research and criticism of the novel together with new insights into its interpretations. The biographical and historical context is given, and there is a guide to further reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

this is one amazing book, and I recommend it very much.
This is a wonderful book about a very difficult era in France.It talks about the problems of everyday life, the pains and betrayals in love, and it also explores human nature.It's a great book, and I sincerelyrecommend anyone who speaks french to read it.I can guarantee that youwill not regret it!Thanks again to my great french instructor MmeLavocat-Dubuis for helping me understand this story and making meappreciate it!! ... Read more

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This work provides a scholarly tool to facilitate research, to identify the diverse responses to Zola as an innovative and controversial French novelist, and to recognize the phenomenal increase of his popularity during and after the quarter of the nineteenth century considered in this study. The book also includes a chronology of Zola's life and work, a checklist of translations, and an annotation of books, articles, films and video adaptation illustrating and illuminating his degree of progressive popularity within each year. ... Read more

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Leader of the 19th-century naturalist movement in France, Zola's major works include Germinal and Nana, both part of the Rougon-Macquert Cycle.

This title, Emile Zola, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of Emile Zola through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Emile Zola, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Long, and mostly about french people.
Mostly about french people and long ... Read more

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On July 19th, 1898, Emile Zola arrived in England after fleeing imprisonment in France. He was to spend eleven months in self-imposed exile because of his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. During this time, the family of his English translator, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, took care of his everyday needs. While in Britain, Zola wrote a short text entitled 'Pages d'exil,' in which he talked about his feelings regarding England, exile, and other matters. An avid photographer, Zola also took pictures of his surroundings that were left with the Vizetelly family when he returned to France.

Dorothy Speirs and Yannick Portebois, in collaboration with Ernest Alfred Vizetelly's last surviving grandson, have here reproduced those photographs with the first English translation, fully annotated, of 'Pages d'exil.' The photographs, of landscapes, churches, and street scenes, have never been published before, and represent a major contribution to the collection of Zola photographs, many of which are today largely inaccessible. Together, the text and photographs will be of great interest to anyone who enjoys Zola's work, and to scholars of French history and the Dreyfus Affair.

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Emile Zola is a towering literary figure of the nineteenth century. His main literary achievement was his twenty-volume novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart (1870-93).In this series he combines a novelist's skills with those of the investigative journalist to examine the social, sexual and moral landscape of the late nineteenth century in a way that scandalized bourgeois society. In 1898 Zola crowned his literary career with a political act, his famous open letter ('J'accuse...!') to the President of the French Republic in defence of Alfred Dreyfus. These newly commissioned essays offer readings of individual novels as well as analyses of Zola's originality, his representation of society, sexuality and gender, his relations with the painters of his time, his narrative art, and his role in the Dreyfus Affair. The Companion also includes a chronology, detailed summaries of all of Zola's novels, suggestions for further reading, and information about specialist resources. ... Read more

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This work deals with Zola's realistic depiction of the effects of class, environment and heredity on his fictional women and the children they rear, providing insight into the difficulties facing mothers in late nineteenth-century France. The study of maternal figures in "Zola's Rougon-Macquart" reveals the extent to which the author's explicit goal of depicting reality is often accompanied by narration that casts doubt upon maternal behavior. ... Read more

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The first comprehensive study of Zola based on the role of visual perception in his theories and works.The late nineteenth-century novel can be considered, in certain respects, as a visual art form. The Visual Novel attempts to develop and implement a visual methodology for approaching the novel, while undertaking a comprehensive study of Emile Zola's twenty-novel series, Les Rougon1acquart, and suggesting relationships between Zola's work and that of his contemporaries in painting, experimental psychology, and criticism. The author also analyzes three paintings from the impressionist period in detail and relates them to the handling of thematic content, viewpoint, and description in Zola's novels.William Berg traces the impact of vision in many of the major areas of novelistic endeavor: Zola's theories stress the key role of vision in the experimental method. Optical instruments and effects, underscoring the important motif of 'looking" (le regard), occupy a major place in the thematic content of Zola's novels. Viewpoint, central to Zola's program of narration objectivity, is characterized by a multiplicity of perspectives, often crossing the conventional boundaries between the spaces of narrator, character, and reader. Descriptive passages reveal a progressive, perceptual style, where the hazy impression yields to the solid, material perception of reality, embodying the crucial notion of determinism. Finally, Zola's figures, stimulated by external effects of light and color and shaped by the internal forces of fear and desire, lead us to locate the role of hallucination and visual imagination in the perceptual and creative processes. Berg then suggests parallels between Zola and other novelists of his time in each of the above areas, further demonstrating the visual nature of the cultural climate of late nineteenth-century France. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential for reading Zola
`A Zola Dictionary`, first published in 1912, is in the public domain and free copies are available online (see the Comment below for a link). The bulk of the dictionary is an alphabetical list of every character from the 20 Rougon-Macquart novels with a sentence to paragraph long description. The books sub-title says it also contains: "a biographical and critical introduction, synopses of the plots, bibliographical note, map, genealogy, etc." although these are somewhat brief in comparison to the character list at the heart of the book.

I find keeping track of the 100's of characters in each of Zola's novels difficult, they are non-English names that don't "stick" and are easily confused between similar sounding names, and many characters have more than one name depending on family relations. Even the primary characters have complex histories that it is helpful to have a summary for. Zola wrote "crowded novels" with characters showing up only once or twice. It's easy to skip over them if you don't remember who they are, perhaps briefly introduced 200 pages back and mentioned only once again, they are not central to the plot, but one misses the depth of Zola's intent.

`A Zola Dictionary` is the only comprehensive list of characters I have found. It is so comprehensive, for `La Terre` ("The Earth"), it contains the name of every cow, plus 4 or 5 historical brigands mentioned only once in passing - it seems as if every name has an entry. The downside is they are all listed alphabetically in one giant list without regard to which novel they are from (although this is noted at the end of each description) - so it's a chore to search the dictionary looking up a name - it would be better to have a single-page reference list of all characters within a particular novel to avoid page flipping through the dictionary. To that end I created such a list for `La Terre` and posted it on the web with descriptions extracted from this dictionary (see Comment for link). Another problem is it contains serious and unnecessary plot spoilers. However, the plot spoilers are towards the end of each entry, so if one is in the middle of reading the novel and want a reminder of who a character is, just read the first sentence or two of the entry (this is not always easy!). Finally, the descriptions were written with the values of aVictorian moralist and will occasionally be laughable to the modern reader. I found this to be a bonus in helping understand the perspective of the age and what the English censors were so concerned about. For example in `La Terre`, a novel which contains incest as a central plot device, it is never mentioned in the dictionary at all, presumably bowdlerized from the English translations of the day. ... Read more

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The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist who has come from the provinces to conquer Paris but is conquered instead by the flaws of his own genius.Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series.It provides a unique insight into Zola's career as a writer and his relationship with Cezanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence.It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Yes! It Is a Masterpiece!
This novel, I mean, despite all the 'faint praise' four-star reviews. I had the advantage, I confess, of reading it in French, but my wife read this translation and thought it was adequate.

The English title, however, isn't entirely adequate. The original - L'Oeuvre/ The Work - could refer to a single painting or just as well to the Works of a painter or to the Vocation/Work of being an artist. There are two characters in this novel who are consumed by their Work, the writer Pierre Sandoz and the painter Claude Lantier. The narrative focuses on the painter, Claude, whose genius is recognized only by his few closest friends, whose paintings are rejected and ridiculed by the public, and who in fact is pathologically unable to finish work, to express that genius to his own satisfaction. Claude's "Work" is a tragic failure in the end. But beyond the story of poor Claude, this novel is a profound depiction of the Artist -- any artist on any art -- and his/her agonistic consummation in The Work. Reading this novel with empathy will offer you two life-choices: 1) to be double-darn grateful NOT to be an artist, or 2) to be unable to imagine that Life is worth living if you are NOT an artist.

It's a wordy book, but artists are wordy people. There are chapter-long conversations that do not advance the plot, but rather serve as manifestos of Zola's literary aspirations, and of the aesthetics of the Impressionist painters who were his contemporaries. If those Impressionists are among your own artistic favorites, you will be thrilled by Zola's animation of them. If not, you may be bored. Me, I find that there are more boring readers in the world than boring books. One of those conversations, outdoors, between Claude and Pierre, amounts to Zola's 'prospectus' for his life work, the twenty novels of the "Rougon-Macquart" series. Pierre says:
"I know now exactly what I'm going to do in all this. Oh, nothing colossal, something quite modest, just enough for one lifetime even when you have some pretty exaggerated ambitions! I'm going to take a family and study each member of it, one by one, where they come from, what becomes of them, how they react to one another. Humanity in miniature, therefor, the way humanity evolves, the way it behaves... I shall place my characters in some definite period that will provide the milieu and the prevailing circumstances and make the thing a sort of slice of history... I shall make it a series of novels, say fifteen or twenty, each complete in itself and with its own particular setting, but all connected, a cycle of books...."
The character Pierre was just beginning his first novel, which would start him on a career of success, but foxy old Emile Zola was back-filling here. L'Oeuvre was the fourteenth of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, published in 1886. The twentieth -- Le Docteur Pascal -- would appear in 1893, four years before William Faulkner (America's great family-cycle novelist) was born.

Claude, Pierre, and their friends in the novel are "Bohemians" and The Masterpiece is a tangy, slangy, slightly lurid portrayal of the Bohemian lifestyle, that social and sexual freedom which lured artists and writers to the Paris of the mid-19th Century. Zola's books were shocking to his contemporaries, even in France but especially in Victorian England and America. Not only did he describe sexual relations explicitly but he removed them from questions of morality. Worse yet, he blatantly asserted the 'truth' of that horrid man Darwin! Zola was the first novelist of note to treat humanity as subject to evolutionary constraints, the first novelist of modern sociology. To my mind, Zolastill seems a radically 'modern' writer.

That 'Bohemian' Paris, don't you know, is the Paris we all want to visit! The Paris we hope to see as tourists! That's another glory of Zola's Work; it's the closest we can come to a time machine. The descriptions of Paris -- of its streets, parks, crowds, passions in the 1800s -- are superbly evocative, even in the English translation. The hapless Claude, in the novel, is obsessed with the image of Paris that he aspires to paint on a canvas "as big as the Louvre". Claude's brief 'happiness', with his adoring wife and without the need to paint, takes place in the countryside, but Claude can't escape his obsession with Paris and its life of The Work. Eventually, Paris and L'Oeuvre consume him. His wife, for whom both the fictional author Pierre and the actual author Emile feel enormous affection and comprehension, falls victim to L'Oeuvre as tragically as Claude. Zola's portrayal of women in this novel and others, by the way, has been denounced by some as disparaging to women. I absolutely disagree. His women are flesh-and-blood real, complete in themselves, plausible, and every bit as admirable and/or despicable as his men.

I'd love to do an experiment in 'perception' with this novel, using two groups of readers. One group would read it "cold", with no prefaces or critiques telling them what to expect. The other group would be aware of the common critical assumptions that The Masterpiece is autobiographical and that Claude was intended as a partial portrayal of the painter Paul Cezanne. It's true that Zola and Cezanne were boyhood and lifetime friends, coming from the same city of southern France. It's very likely that Zola drew details of his novel from real-life experiences, including experiences borrowed from the life of Cezanne. And it seems to be true that Cezanne was somewhat offended by L'Oeuvre when he read it. But Claude Lantier is NOT Cezanne! And if Zola intended him to be Cezanne, he flagrantly misunderstood and misrepresented his friend. The paintings that Claude in the novel hopes to exhibit -- paintings of monstrous scope -- are nothing like Cezanne's. In fact, the one painting that Claude exhibits in the Gallery of the Rejected (an actual historical exhibit) is far closer to Manet than Cezanne, by its description. Cezanne's recognition was slow coming, but it came in full measure; Cezanne was NOT a frustrated failure, not at any time even in his own mind. The portrayal of Claude's self-destructive obsessive-compulsive personality could be taken as prophetic; the next generation of painters did include Vincent van Gogh, after all. In general, Zola understood writers and the aesthetic aspirations of writers far more clearly than he understood visual artists and their aesthetic preoccupations. That, I think, is the only weakness of this novel; Zola presumes to speak for painters too freely. One might also carp at Zola's depiction ofthe writer Pierre Sandoz; he "goes easy" on himself, if indeed Pierre is a self-portrait. Pierre is modest, brave, and above all loyal throughout. I can hardly believe Zola himself was so lovable.

One more 'pleasure' plucked from this English translation. Here's the description of the feast Pierre and his charming wife prepare, for the last uncomfortable reunion of their Bohemian circle of artist-friends:
"They were both fond of exotic dishes, and on this occasion decided on oxtail soup, grilled red mullet, fillet of beef with mushrooms, ravioli a l'italienne, hazel-hens from Russia and a truffle salad, as well as caviar and kilkis for hors d'oeuvre, a praline ice cream, a little Hungarian cheese green as an emerald, some fruit and pastries. To drink, simply some decanters of vintage claret, Chambertin with the roast and sparkling Moselle as a change from the same old champagne with the dessert."

A thousand devils, my friends! I was born in the wrong century!

Interesting historically
Interesting historically.The artist in the story is a combination of Manet, Monet, and Cezanne.

Not Terribly Masterful
I would say that this is the novel, par excellence, of the tortured artist, except for the fact that it is not.This Oxford edition, as per usual, provides us in the Introduction with a "clef" for this "roman," so to speak, so that anybody who wants to review it will be fully aware that such-and-such a character is based on such-and-such a person in Zola's life.This is all very interesting for, say, a biographer or Zola enthusiast, but it adds very little to the experience of simply reading the work.

So, basically, this is a book about an artist with talent who, gradually, becomes possessed by his artistic vision to the point where the pursuit of art is no longer compatible with life.Zola is a very competent writer, and my favourite parts were his descriptions of vanished 19th Century Paris, described with an artist's precision.

But, I must say that I really don't very much care for Zola, at least as represented in this work.I'm not going to put it down to Naturalism or Realism, because all such "-isms" are question-begging.They assume that what is "real" or what is "natural" is known or agreed upon, while, on the contrary - as Proust is not slow in pointing out - these are the greatest mysteries in life!

Shortly before his suicide, Claude speculates that, "The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones."If this is the way in which I regarded my past, I would have ended things decades ago!To say nothing of Proust, for whom memory is the touchstone of a sort of eternity!

Zola's outlook here, it seems to me, owes much to Nietzsche and to Darwin, except that Nietzsche's artist-hero doesn't want adulation from the masses and Darwin's theory doesn't really apply to the "social Darwinism" which Zola - who employs the term "survival of the fittest" at least twice herein - presents us with here.

It is a prosaic story of a neglected artist going mad: nothing more, nothing less.

YThe Masterpiece
An easy and enjoyable read. Vividly evokes the atmosphere of late-19th century bohemia in Paris,

Superb
Given that Zola lived through the whole period of when the Impressionists turned the Salon's on their heads this is almost a biographical piece. For the various characters Zola merely drew from his friends that he would frequent the cafes and bars with. The lead character, Claude, is primarily based on Manet and Cezanne - both of which wouldn't forgive him doing so. Zola wasn't too enamoured with the impressionist and post-impressionist movements, this attitude he uses to great effect when depicting the derision with which the artists work was met. The opening piece which Claude has displayed in the Salon is in effect Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur l'herbe" (1963).
The book opens with Claude finding a woman drenched on his doorstep, Christine. She has just arrived in Paris and through one thing and anotherbecomes lost and shelters from the rain in Claude's doorway. She is the impetus for the figure in his painting. The story unfolds with their romance, Claude trying to get his artwork accepted by the art intelligensia, succumbing to the desire to paint THE painting, etc.
A number of characters share the stage, again most likely based on artisans that Zola knew: architects, artists, writers, critics.
The book conveys quite well what it must have been for them all struggling to get a toehold and make an impression on the Paris art scene.
The tone of the book is somewhat bleak but Zola captures the Paris of the late 1800's well. I've never been to Paris but for those that have, the book is replete with names of various streets and districts across the city.
This was the first Zola novel I've read. Being an artist this book obviously struck a chord with me. It is well written and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys art, particularly from this period. ... Read more

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In these three short stories, Emile Zola presents characters in search of fulfillment—romantic, religious, and financial. Read together, they give us an extraordinary depiction of sexual mores.

When the apparently angelic Thérèse commits murder, she offers sexual favors to a petty clerk if he will dispose of the body; the pregnant Flavie manipulates a neighbor’s interest in her dowry to arrange a shotgun wedding; church–going women find their hunger for Christianity unsatisfied by a vapid priest—beautiful and poignant stories unified by the powerful themes of deception and discontent. With a Foreword by A.N. Wilson. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great story--Archaic translation
This translation is not new; it's a copy of an early 20th century translation that is archaic and not a translation at all so much as a transliteration. Just "Look Inside" at the first page of text: the awkward syntax and poor grammar that only a crude translation could render. Zola was the ultimate stylist and if you think this poor version is what he intended, you don't know French lit very well. This publisher is not what it purports to be.

Three stories on the power of Love
Emile Zola is primarily known for his novels. Only one English language collection of Zola's short stories has been available prior to the publication of FOR A NIGHT OF LOVE. Ths is a set of 16 stories published by Oxford University Press under the title The Attack On The Mill And Other Stories.

This current collection brings together three stories that the editors claim have never before been published in English. All three have a romantic theme.

The first, For A Night Of Love, tells the story of a shy young postal worker who falls in love with his beautiful, rich, and haughty neighbor. She ignores him until one night when she needs his help. The story tells how far he will go for a night of love.

The second tale is of a young man, Nantas, who comes to Paris to make his fortune and falls in love with his landlord's daughter. She needs a favor from him, but disdains his love. He goes to extraordinary lengths to win her love, but will he succeed?

These two stories of male desire are followed by Fasting, a story in which Zola takes one of his pokes at the Catholic clergy. It portrays a rich woman's sexual daydreams as she sits in church listening to a sermon on fasting given by a gourmet priest .

All three stories are excellent at portraying 19th Century France and the people of this time. It is our good fortune that these three are now available in the English language. The Foreward gives some insight into Zola's writings and the Introduction some background on the stories. A good collection of stories from one of France's greatest writiers. ... Read more