Doctor Pascal

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Book Jungle, 2008 - Fiction - 288 pages
This is the final volume in the Rougon-Macquart series. This series brought Zola literary fame and is considered his life work. It took 25 years to finish the 20 volumes. The idea for writing the social history of a family encompassing several volumes probably came from his reading the works of Balzac. Zola shows how people in a family who appear to be quite individualistic actually are quite similar. Heredity and proximity determine who we are and how we act. The novel begins in 1872, after the fall of the Second Empire and the end of the reign of Emperor Napoleon III. Pascal Rougon is the son of Pierre and Félicité Rougon, who rose to power in the fictional town of Plassans which was detailed in the first novel of the series La fortune des Rougon.

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About the author (2008)

Zola was the spokesperson for the naturalist novel in France and the leader of a school that championed the infusion of literature with new scientific theories of human development drawn from Charles Darwin (see Vol. 5) and various social philosophers. The theoretical claims for such an approach, which are considered simplistic today, were outlined by Zola in his Le Roman Experimental (The Experimental Novel, 1880). He was the author of the series of 20 novels called The Rougon-Macquart, in which he attempted to trace scientifically the effects of heredity through five generations of the Rougon and Macquart families. Three of the outstanding volumes are L'Assommoir (1877), a study of alcoholism and the working class; Nana (1880), a story of a prostitute who is a femme fatale; and Germinal (1885), a study of a strike at a coal mine. All gave scope to Zola's gift for portraying crowds in turmoil. Today Zola's novels have been appreciated by critics for their epic scope and their visionary and mythical qualities. He continues to be immensely popular with French readers. His newspaper article "J'Accuse," written in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, launched Zola into the public limelight and made him the political conscience of his country.

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