Garnett, A. F. (1 January 2005). Steel Wheels: The Evolution of the Railways and how They Stimulated and Excited Engineers, Architects, Artists, Writers, Musicians and Travellers. Cannwood. ISBN 9780955025709. Bridger, David; Wolk, Samuel (1 January 1976). The New Jewish Encyclopedia. Behrman House, Inc. p.111. ISBN 978-0874411201. I read Zola's novel when I spent a summer working in Paris, just at the time when I had left childhood behind but was still too young to understand the limitations of my knowledge and experience. Smiling condescendingly at teenagers, I was barely twenty-two myself, and Nana shook my world. After I had finished the novel, Paris looked, smelled and tasted differently. Layers and layers of hidden life, of secret suffering and vice, seemed to appear overnight. I was in Paris because I loved art and literature, and wanted to make that my profession at some point. Reading Nana made me see the other side of the beautiful medal of artistic achievement: my idealism gave way to a deep crush on the marginalised characters lurking in the side lanes of the big official literary avenues. I still think of Nana each time I visit Paris, just like I think of Oliver Twist whenever I am in London. Most of the Rougon-Macquart novels were written during the French Third Republic. To an extent, attitudes and value judgments may have been superimposed on that picture with the wisdom of hindsight. Some critics classify Zola's work, and naturalism more broadly, as a particular strain of decadent literature, which emphasized the fallen, corrupted state of modern civilization. [46] Nowhere is the doom-laden image of the Second Empire so clearly seen as in Nana, which culminates in echoes of the Franco-Prussian War (and hence by implication of the French defeat). [47] Even in novels dealing with earlier periods of Napoleon III's reign the picture of the Second Empire is sometimes overlaid with the imagery of catastrophe. [ citation needed] Poster by Léon Choubrac advertising the publication of Zola's novel Germinal in Gil Blas, 25 November 1884 For all that, Nana herself is the closest thing to the anti-heroine of this tale: she is selfish and sometimes venial, greedy for luxury and things... but what else can she be as the product of her society? She is also good-natured and sometimes kind; she takes a kind of child-like pleasure in her own beauty and she is under no delusions that she is a good stage performer. She exploits all men but she can also be kind to them; but when she herself takes pleasure, it's with a woman.

The poet is the artist in words whose writing, as in the racecourse scene in Nana or in the descriptions of the laundry in L'Assommoir or in many passages of La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, Le Ventre de Paris and La Curée, vies with the colourful impressionistic techniques of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The scientist is a believer in some measure of scientific determinism – not that this, despite his own words "devoid of free will" (" dépourvus de libre arbitre"), [55] need always amount to a philosophical denial of free will. The creator of " la littérature putride", a term of abuse invented by an early critic of Thérèse Raquin (a novel which predates Les Rougon-Macquart series), emphasizes the squalid aspects of the human environment and upon the seamy side of human nature. [56]

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Warembourg, Nicolas (2008). Lire, voir, entendre – un avocat pour Zola, pour Dreyfus, contre la terre entière (in French). Paris: Louis Audibert. p.153. In Paris, Zola maintained his friendship with Cézanne, who painted a portrait of him with another friend from Aix-en-Provence, writer Paul Alexis, entitled Paul Alexis Reading to Zola. The Strange Death of Emile Zola". History Today Volume 52. 9 September 2002 . Retrieved 21 February 2017. In Zola there is the theorist and the writer, the poet, the scientist and the optimist – features that are basically joined in his own confession of positivism; [ citation needed] later in his life, when he saw his own position turning into an anachronism, he would still style himself with irony and sadness over the lost cause as "an old and rugged Positivist". [53] [54]

Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family. Sirven, Alfred; Leverdier, Henri (2011). Nana's Daughter: A Story of Parisian Life. Nobu Press. In French the title was La fille de Nana, réponse au roman naturaliste de Zola or La Fille de Nana, roman de moeurs Parisiennes. Sirven and Leverdier co-authored several works. One was a reply to Dumas. Another, Le Jesuite rouge, contended that the Jesuits organized the Paris Commune to create Jewish martyrs and thereby sympathy for the Jews in France. As before banker Steiner, Nana's life is deteriorating the monetary funds of Muffat, who also has a wife in anger and revenge for his infidelity by going with lovers and multiplying their expenses. Without mercy, Nana asks him more and more, and every time he cares less, he surprises her with others in his bedroom. Finally, in a reasonably hasty finale (provoked perhaps by the writing in typical episodes of the time) in which it moves away for the courtesan and her lover, Nana moves away from the almost ruined Muffat and goes on a trip. Upon returning to France, he finds that his aunt has neglected his three-year-old son, and he has taken smallpox and died. She becomes infected with this disease and soon dies, taken care of in a hotel by one of her old scene rivals and unable to receive the visit of Muffat. Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they experienced a falling out later in life over Zola's fictionalised depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in Zola's novel L'Œuvre ( The Masterpiece, 1886).Mitterand, Henri (1986). Zola et le naturalisme[ Zola and Naturalism]. Que sais-je? (in French). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-039642-0. OCLC 15289843. Cézanne et Moi (2016) is a French film, directed by Danièle Thompson, that explores the friendship between Zola and the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. [60] Correspondence Between Emile Zola and Imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus". Shapell Manuscript Foundation. Archived from the original on 7 July 2012 . Retrieved 29 January 2012.