Zola: Th?r?se Raquin [Paperback]

A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Th?r?se Raquin was denounced as
pornography on its publication in 1867. Putrid literature was how
Louis Ulbach described the novel in a contemporary review. Zola
defended himself against these attacks in his preface to the second
edition, in which he outlined his aim to produce a new, scientific
form of realism. The novel marks a crucial step in Zola's development
and is a major early work of Naturalism.

In his introduction to
Th?r?se Raquin, Brian Nelson places the novel in its cultural,
intellectual and artistic contexts, and compares Zola's scientific aims
with his actual practice in this work. The scientific status of
Naturalist fiction remains problematic; in the final analysis it is
influenced by literary models and conventions. Zola's powerful
mythopoeic imagination does much to counteract the mechanistic view of
humanity the novel was intended to embody. The myth of the fall is,
indeed, fundamental to Zola's Naturalistic vision.

A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Th?r?se Raquin was denounced as
pornography on its publication in 1867. Putrid literature was how
Louis Ulbach described the novel in a contemporary review.

Brian Nelson is currently Professor of French at Monash University,
Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of several other books on Zola,
including Emile Zola: A Selective Analytical Bibliography.

Novel by Emile Zola, first published serially as Un Mariage d'Amour in 1867 and published in book form with the present title in the same year. Believing that an author must simply establish his characters in their particular environment and then observe and record their actions as if conducting an experiment, Zola nonetheless adopted a highly moral, unscientific tone in this grisly novel, the first to put his analytical method into practice. The sensual Therese and her lover Laurent murder her weak husband Camille. After ma