Therese Raquin (World's Classics)

by EmileZola (Author), Andrew Rothwell (Translator)

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.25

  One of Zola's most famous realistic novels, Therese Raquin is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultry and murder among the lower classes in nineteenth-century Parisian society. Zola's shocking tale dispassionately dissects the motivations of his characters--mere human beasts, who kill in order to satisfy their lust--and stands as a key manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which the author was the founding father.

• Used

  Paperback
  1970

  $3.39

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $28.38

  A gothic tale of murder and adultery, Therese Raquin was denounced aspornography on its publication in 1867. Putrid literature was howLouis Ulbach described the novel in a contemporary review. Zoladefended himself against these attacks in his preface to the secondedition, in which he outlined his aim to produce a new, scientific form of realism. The novel marks a crucial step in Zola's developmentand is a major early work of Naturalism.In his introduction toTherese Raquin, Brian Nelson places the novel in its cultural, intellectual and artistic contexts, and compares Zola's scientific aimswith his actual practice in this work. The scientific status ofNaturalist fiction remains problematic; in the final analysis it isinfluenced by literary models and conventions. Zola's powerfulmythopoeic imagination does much to counteract the mechanistic view ofhumanity the novel was intended to embody. The myth of the fall is, indeed, fundamental to Zola's Naturalistic vision.