More than half of Zola's novels have been compiled into the Lugong-Markard Family series by him, and these novels are also continuous and relevant in plot and characters (similar to Balzac's Human Comedy). This series of novels all focus on the Lugon-Macard family under the rule of the second French Empire, and discuss the influence of genetic factors on violence, alcoholism and prostitution by describing the life of five generations. Of the two branches of this big family, the "Lugong" family is well-behaved and respected, while the "McCade" family is notorious.
Zola and the famous French painter Paul Cézanne were close friends from childhood to youth, but when Zola made up Cezanne and the painters' bohemian attitude towards life in his representative novels, they broke off diplomatic relations.
1898 65438+ 10/3 zola published my complaint in the Paris daily "Dawn", which made him suffer the biggest setback in his career as a writer and even endangered his life. The owners of Dawn, Eni Wogan and George Kerry Duhamel Du Monceau, think that this highly controversial novel is no less than an open letter to President Phyllis Foer. In this article, Zola accused the French government of its anti-Semitic policy and created the famous Dreyfus case. On February 7, the government sued Zola for libel; On February 23rd, the court convicted Zola. Zola was forced to flee to England. Zola claimed that the judgments in the two cases against herself and the Jewish captain Dreyfus, who was imprisoned for false espionage, were misjudged.
1902 On September 28th, Zola died of gas poisoning in her apartment in Paris. The cause of his death has been speculated by later generations. Some people say it was suicide, while others think it was the result of the murder of political opponents. A grand funeral was held on October 5th, 65438/KLOC-0. Thousands of worshippers escorted his coffin to Montmartre cemetery. 1June 6, 908, Zola's ashes were moved to the Pantheon.
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Zola and Naturalism
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The birth of naturalism
In 1950s and 1960s, science and technology developed rapidly in France, flaunting "scientificity" became a fashion, and "Let science enter the literary field" became a fashionable slogan.
1857, the philosopher Tanner defined literary naturalism for the first time in Comments and Historical Essays, that is, observing and describing life in a scientific way. Zola accepted Turner's aesthetic theory. He also read Lukacs's Philosophy and Physiology of Natural Inheritance, Letuno's Passion Physiology, Darwin's Origin of Species and other biological and genetic works, and gradually formed a set of naturalistic literary thoughts.
Zola believes that modern literature should abandon "ideal ointment" and "romantic sugar juice", take science as the guide, maintain absolute objectivity and neutrality, and record the truth of the real world. Only in this way can literature play a positive role. He advocates that novelists should not only have a scientific attitude, carefully observe life and collect a large amount of data, but also have a scientific method, that is, an experimental method, to put characters in various environments for experiments, so as to examine the law of emotional activity determined by natural laws. Under the decision of this view, Zola believes that people, like other creatures, obey a certain determinism, and environment and heredity play a decisive role in the formation of personality.
Therese Lagan is the first novel written by Zola according to his own aesthetic thoughts. Based on the story of an adulterous man and woman who were tortured by ghosts and finally committed suicide, the novel tries to render the clinical manifestations of physical dysfunction. Goncourt, another representative of naturalistic literature, once commented: "An outstanding Pathological Anatomy of Regret."
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Lugon-Markard family
Inspired by Balzac's Human Comedy, Zola planned to write a multi-volume masterpiece as early as 1868, making a "scientific" study of a family in the second imperial era, clarifying the inevitable consequences of heredity and the adverse effects of social environment on the body and mind of family members, and then showing the social outlook of this era through the details of various customs and events. From 187 1 to 1893, 20 novels have been published one after another, which is the famous masterpiece "Lugong-McCade Family". These novels are self-contained and interrelated, and about 1200 characters are active in them. Blood relationship is the bond between the main characters. This novel takes the life track of five generations of Lugon-Macard family as the main line, just like an encyclopedia of the second imperial society, covering almost all aspects of the second imperial period in France, including a lot of darkness and corruption in French upper class and industry and commerce. Among them, the outstanding works are Nana, Inn and Bud. Zola shows sympathy for the working class in her works. Among them, Germination is the first time in the history of French literature to show the life of coal miners, which embodies the writer's sympathy for socialism and * * * productism.
Generally speaking, the 20 novels that make up the Lugong-McCade family have uneven artistic achievements. Zola equates literary creation with scientific experiments, which inevitably ignores the characteristics and laws of literary creation itself. However, Zola introduced natural science and medicine into the field of literary expression for the first time, which greatly expanded the connotation and skill richness of literature.
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Other works
Following the Lugon-Markard family, Zola wrote a novel trilogy A Tale of Three Cities: Lourde, Rome and Paris. These three novels are Zola's thorough liquidation of religion, showing the writer's hatred of the Catholic Church, and proposing that the only way to save mankind is to abandon religion and advocate science.
During his exile, Zola began to write a series of novels "Four Gospels", praising the four virtues that laid the foundation for the future society with the tone of savior and expressing his belief in science. These four works are "Reproduction", praising the happiness of family and many children; Labor reflects the utopian ideological tendency of changing society by transforming labor; The truth is a hint to the Dreyfus case; As well as the unfinished Justice, it expresses the idea of making fairness and justice live on human beings. This series of novels shows Zola's optimistic creative thoughts in his later years.
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Main work
Lugon-Markard family
bar
fool
Dr Pascal
seed
A human face, the heart of a beast-a humanoid beast.
money
breakdown
land
Tale of Three Cities
Rotis
Rome
Paris
Four gospels
type
labour
The truth (published after death)
Justice (unfinished)
Zola, 1840, 12 was born in an engineer's family in April. His father, an Italian engineer, moved to France and died when Zola was 7 years old. His mother is French. 1859, Zola failed to take the high school graduation exam. In the next two years, she tasted the bitterness of unemployment, thus experiencing the life of working people and preparing conditions for future literary creation. 1862, joined Ashter Publishing House. 1864, his first collection of short stories was published, and the following year he wrote an autobiographical novel "Confessions of Claude", which attracted the attention of the police because of its obscene content and was forced to resign the following year. With the appearance of the industrial revolution, the social changes in the19th century prompted realist writers to describe all aspects of social life. Zola promoted this realism to a new stage. He emphasized data research and objective description, comprehensively explained life from the perspective of philosophy of science, and looked at the behavior and performance of others from the perspective of pure matter. 1867, Zola put his scientific theory into practice for the first time, and published a creepy novel, Delis Lagan. The following year, Zola wrote another scientific empirical novel, Madeleine Phila. 187 1 published the first feature-length serial novel "The Fate of Lugongmaca Family". Subsequently, one book was published every year. 1877, the seventh book "Small Hotel", which studies the consequences of alcoholism, came out, and Zola became famous and embarked on the road to success. Then, it took him 16 years to write the remaining 13 books, including Nana, Germination, Money and Collapse. In a sense, the Lugongmaca family is a portrayal of all aspects of French life from Charles Louis Napolé on Bonaparte's coming to power to the failure of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. After The Lugongmaca Family, Zola wrote two short stories, Three Cities and Four Gospels.
Zola believes in science and is a scientific determinist. He believes that naturalism is an inherent factor in French life. He claimed that his method originated from Introduction to Experimental Medical Research written by Bernard, a physiologist in the19th century. Zola said in his paper on experimental novels that writers can prove new conclusions drawn in the laboratory on fictional characters. He believes that human nature is completely determined by heredity, and shortcomings and disgust are the result of a family member's illness in the palace, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Once the reason is clear, it can be overcome through the combination of medical treatment and education, thus improving human nature. This is the main idea that runs through the Lugongmaca family. In the sensational case that Dreyfus, a Jewish French officer, was falsely accused of selling military secrets to Germany, Zola stepped forward in June 1898 and published an open letter in Sinian. The first sentence is "I accuse". He exposed the plot of the French General Staff to frame Dreyfus, and was sentenced to prison for libel, so he had to flee to England and return to France in June of the following year. During his exile, he began to write four gospels: reproduction (1899), labor (190 1), truth tune (1903) and justice (unfinished). Zola died of gas poisoning in Paris. After death, a public sacrifice was held, and the body was moved to the words of sages. Zola was a controversial figure before his death. His works were regarded as obscene books by the conservative public, especially his work Land was criticized by public opinion when it was published in 1887. Throughout his life, he failed to enter the French Academy.