Émile Zola and his most important works

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Émile Zola (1840 - 1926) was a French novelist and theorist, considered the founder and highest representative of Naturalism. A staunch defender of the truth, his works represent a attack on the manifest hypocrisy of the French bourgeoisie, as well as the romantic idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century. His romantic daring was such that he was well worth enthusiastic admirers and fanatical detractors, the latter being the cause of his exile.

In this lesson from a TEACHER, Émile Zola and his most important works, we will tell you a little more about the life of this great pillar of universal literature and we will summarize some of the most important works of it.

Index

1. Who was Émile Zola
2. Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola's first masterpiece
3. Naná (1880), a new portrait of France
4. Germinal (1885), the most realistic novel by Émile Zola

Before we begin to speak in this lesson of a PROFESSOR of the literary works of Émile Zola, it is important that we know a little more about the life of this universal artist. Born in the fate of a family of the French petty bourgeoisie, Émile Zola spent his childhood in Aix-en-Provence, where he was famous for his

After the death of his father, Zola moved with the rest of the family to Paris to experience, in the first person, a whole series of academic and work misfortunes that led him, in 1862, to work for the advertising department of the Hachette publishing house. Once there, his interest in poetry and theater only increased and led him to fruitful collaborations with newspapers such as Le Figaro, Le Petit Journal or Le Salut Public.

As time went by, Zola devoted himself solely to writing and felt a firmer attraction to the literary realism and philosophical positivism. In 1867 he would publish his first prestigious work, Thérèse Raquin and, for years to come, his monumental work The Raugon-Macquart, as well as a dizzying amount of essays on the nature and purpose of literature, forging the movement of the Naturalism.

But, as we advanced earlier in this lesson on Émile Zola and his most important works, Zola had a lot of detractors. And it is that after the publication in the newspaper L'Aurore from I accuse! (1898) He is in conflict with the conservative government of the Republic, the army and the Catholic Church bringing him, finally, to a period of exile in the United Kingdom. Following his pardon for the Dreyfus case (defended in I accuse!), Zola returned to Paris and in 1902 he died of suffocation, a fact that, to this day, continues to arouse many suspicions.

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Thérèse Raquin is an early novel by Émile Zola that set the tone for all his subsequent production, since in it the French writer began to shape the naturalistic ideology, or as it is also known, social psychology.

The novel tells how Thérèse's monotonous life changes completely after starting a romantic relationship with Laurent, the best friend of her husband, Camille. His state of innocence is transformed by knowing the desire to the point where, together with his lover Laurent, they decide to get rid of his only obstacle, the sickly Camille. But soon, the joy of freedom turns to regrets and love and lust into sheer rejection.

This is one novel full of passion, adultery, murder and remorse that in no case is sustained with moralistic speeches, but with the most neutral of scientific methods. Evidently, Thérèse Raquin It never had the approval of the moralists and not many critics were able to see in it the wake of the future of world literature.

Belonging to the collection Les Rougon-Macquart, focused on dismembering the French society of the Second Empire, Naná tells the joys and misfortunes of the new star of the Variety Theater, at the same time that, studies the inheritance of belonging to a certain social class.

In the hectic Paris of the 19th century, Naná stands as the great femme fatale able to get what she wants thanks to her attributes and, almost always, to the detriment of the fate of the bourgeois and aristocrats who love her. Despite this, the novel also studies the whim of ambition, which seems to be linked to social classes, and which leads our protagonist to know misery and suffering. Although once again, Zola is not a moralist and portrays this prostitute with the rigor of an analyst.

Also belonging to the collection Les Rougon-Macquart, Germinal is one of the hardest novels, as well as realists who never wrote Émile Zola. In it, the French writer dedicates all the volume to the proletariat of a mine, specifically Étienne Lantier, who, after slapping his boss, finds a new occupation in the coal mines.

Germinal is a stark description of miseries of the exploited and oppressed, as well as of the feelings that are unleashed from them. Hatred, resentment, frustration will be the ones who unleash a strike that will bring out the best and worst in each one, without leaving much room for hope.

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