The Experimental Novel

By Emile Zola

1893

First Published

2.86

Average Rating

Number of Pages

1H42M

Audio Length

The Experimental Novel (1880) is an essay by French author �mile Zola. Written at the height of his career as a leading proponent of Naturalism, The Experimental Novel serves to illuminate the author's approach to the practice and purpose of writing while advocating for a revolution of style among artists of his era. Read as a reaction against Romanticism, The Experimental Novel proves a convincing counterpoint to the excesses and failures of nineteenth century art, illustrating the need for literature to draw inspiration from other sources of human understanding—such as science, history, and the social sciences—in order to effectively explore the themes of everyday life. "The return to nature, the naturalistic evolution which marks the century, drives little by little all the manifestation of human intelligence into the same scientific path. Only the idea of a literature governed by science is doubtless a surprise, until explained with precision and understood. It seems to me necessary, then, to say briefly and to the point what I understand by the experimental novel." Rather than imitate reality, a writer must attempt a scientific investigation of the nature of everyday life. For Zola, plot must be secondary to character, and character must be subject to the laws and limitations of a particular society. As a writer interested in the relationships between rich and poor, citizen and state, culture and economy, and personal and public life, Zola found it necessary to write experimental fiction—literally, fiction which experiments with its object of inquiry. Blending science and art, he revolutionized not only the idea of what a novel is and can do, but the responsibility of the artist to society. The Experimental Novel is a masterful essay for readers interested in Zola's work and in the history and philosophy of literature. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of �mile Zola's The Experimental Novel is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Avg Rating

2.86

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Author

Emile Zola

Author · 69 books

Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations. As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world." Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886). From 1877 with the publication of L'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy, he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author. The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.