Showing results by author "Émile Zola" in All Categories

Protagonistin des Romans ist die junge Wäscherin Gervaise Macquart, die zu Beginn der Handlung von ihrem Liebhaber Auguste Lantier verlassen wird. Er nimmt ihr ganzes Geld mit und hinterlässt als einziges Andenken die beiden gemeinsamen Söhne Claude und Etienne. Gervaise, eine tugendhafte und fleißige, aber nunmehr bettelarme Wäscherin, heiratet daraufhin den ehrbaren, aber recht lebenslustigen Zinkarbeiter Coupeau.

Against the backdrop of political and legal corruption in Second Empire France, La Bête Humaine (1890) contrasts the technological advancements of the Machine Age with the primitive and timeless human impulse to possess through killing and to kill through possession. The lives of two railwaymen on the Paris-to-Le-Havre line are fatally entwined by their love for the same woman in this shocking account of brutal violence, greed, revenge, and repression.

Zola’s La Terre (The Earth) proved highly controversial on publication in 1887 and still retains the power to shock. It follows the fortunes of the Fouan family in the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian War. Old Fouan, the patriarch, draws up a legal contract to divide his farmland between his three children in exchange for an allowance that will support him and his wife through a comfortable retirement.

À la suite de la mort de son épouse, Jean Macquart, désespéré, personnage principal de "La Terre", reprend du service dans l'armée. Incorporé dans le 106e de ligne, il y est caporal. Ses hommes le respectent. Lors de la guerre franco-prussienne de 1870, il ne peut qu'assister impuissant à l'effondrement de l'Empire et à la déroute de ses armées.

Le second empire vu sous l'angle des Rougon, archétypes de la bourgeoisie ambitieuse et parvenue.

After her lover abandons her and their two children, Gervaise marries a tin worker, Coupeau, who helps her rebuild her life. She starts her own business, and the two have a daughter, Anna (the protagonist of Zola's later novel Nana). But their happiness is short-lived as a freak accident leaves Coupeau seriously injured, beginning the family's fall into alcohol, desperation, and violence.

Octave Mouret, précurseur inspiré, bouleverse sa corporation comme Haussmann bouleverse la ville. Il parie tout sur les femmes, sur leurs envies et sur leur incapacité à surmonter les tentations.
Une lui résiste : Denise, incarnation de la vertu et de la générosité. Elle devient une obsession pour cet ogre.

Des batignolles à Auteuil, un mécanicien de locomotive erre, le couteau à la main, hanté par une idée fixe : tuer une femme... Dans le train qui mène au Havre, un couple poignarde sauvagement un notable du régime impérial, avant de le jeter sur la voie. À la Croix-de-Maufras, lieu dit reculé, un garde-barrière empoisonne son épouse, dans l'espoir de mettre enfin la main sur son magot.

Sous le second empire, le bouleversement de Paris voit le quartier marchand se transformer avec l'apparition du projet Baltard...

"Je veux vous expliquer comment une famille, un petit groupe d'êtres, se comporte dans une société, en s'épanouissant pour donner naissance à dix, à vingt individus, qui paraissent, au premier coup d'oeil, profondément dissemblables, mais que l'analyse montre intimement liés les uns aux autres. L'hérédité a ses lois, comme la pesanteur." Emile Zola.

Once upon a time, a teenaged Kate Winslet (The Reader, Titanic, Revolutionary Road) received a gift that would leave a lasting impression: a copy of Emile Zola’s classic Thérèse Raquin. Six Academy Award nominations and one Best Actress award later, she steps behind the microphone to perform this haunting classic of passion and disaster.

Aristide Rougon, known as Saccard, is a failed property speculator determined to make his way once more in Paris. Unscrupulous, seductive, and with unbounded ambition, he schemes and manipulates his way to power. Financial undertakings in the Middle East lead to the establishment of a powerful new bank and speculation on the stock market; Saccard meanwhile conducts his love life as energetically as he does his business, and his empire is seemingly unstoppable.

Considered by André Gide to be one of the 10 greatest novels in the French language, Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty and wretchedness of a mining community in Northern France under the second empire. At the centre of the novel is Etienne Lantier, a handsome 21-year-old mechanic, intelligent but with little education and a dangerous predisposition to murderous, alcoholic rage.

Perhaps the most autobiographical of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels, The Masterpiece is a hard, bleak, and raw portrait of unrecognized artistic genius. Claude Lantier, brother to Nana and son of Gervaise, is a struggling painter who dreams of conquering the Paris art scene with his revolutionary "open air" style of painting. Discouraged and mocked, Claude retreats to the countryside with a young woman from Clermont, with whom he has fallen in love, before returning to Paris, where he continues to experience rejection at every turn.

First published between 1870 and 1893, Émile Zola’s 20-book cycle chronicling four generations of the Rougon-Macquarts was a shocking exposé of the decadence, degradation and moral decay of 19th-century France. It included some of his greatest novels, among them his masterpiece, Germinal. These innovative, ambitious dramas, first broadcast on Radio 4 over 24 hours in 2015-16, are a radical reimagining of Zola’s classic series, introducing us to 104-year-old matriarch, Dide, imprisoned in an asylum in southern France.

Étienne Lantier, mécanicien au chômage, erre sur les routes du nord de la France. Au hasard d'une rencontre, frigorifié et mort de faim, il finit par trouver un emploi dans la mine du Voreux. Il découvre alors les conditions inhumaines du travail et la misère de la vie de mineur. Mais, les conditions économiques étant au plus bas, la Compagnie propriétaire du Voreux essaie de baisser encore leurs maigres salaires.

Country girl Denise Baudu arrives in Paris hoping for a position in her uncle's clothing shop. However, her uncle's shop, along with other small shops in the area, is doing poorly. This is due to the large store across the street - The Ladies' Paradise - which is swallowing up the small specialty stores by offering 'one-stop shopping' at discounted prices. 19th Century Paris is experiencing the dawn of the department store. Despite her loyalty to her uncle, Denise is drawn to the progressive Ladies' Paradise and it's owner, the driven but charismatic Monsieur Mouret.

Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames, 1883) plays out in a colossal and opulent Parisian department store of the same name. Its owner, Octave Mouret, builds his innovative, upmarket women’s fashion empire at the expense of the city’s smaller, traditional shops.

Although it is little known in this country, The Belly of Paris is considered one of Émile Zola’s best novels. Set in the newly built food markets of Paris, it is a story of wealth and poverty set against a sumptuous banquet of food and commerce. Having just escaped from prison after being wrongfully accused, young Florent arrives at Paris’ food market, Les Halles, half starved, surrounded by all he can’t have, and indignant at his world, which he now knows to be unjust. He finds that the city’s working classes have been displaced to make way for bigger streets and bourgeois living quarters, so he settles in with his brother’s family.

Le Figaro du 23 janvier 1868 à propos de Thérèse Raquin : "C'est le résidu de toutes les horreurs. Le sujet est simple, le remords physique de deux amants qui tuent le mari mais qui, ce mari tué, n'osent plus s'étreindre, car voici le supplice délicat qui les attend."