Emile's Zola TheExperimental Novel
Table of Contents
Introduction by Marciano Guerrero
Brief Bio
About The Experimental Novel
Chapter 1 — Experiment in literature
Chapter 2 — Applying the experimental method
to the naturalistic novel
Chapter 3 — The most noble work
Chapter 4 — Poets and philosophers and
indeterminism
Chapter 5 — The metaphysical man is dead
The Experimental Novel (Le Roman Expérimental)
Introduction by Marciano Guerrero
Brief Bio
Emile Zola
(1840 – 1902)
was born in Paris. His father was an Italian engineer, who became a French
citizen in 1862. Zola spent his childhood in Aix-en-Provence, southeast France.
When he was seven, his father died, leaving the family in poverty. In 1858 Zola moved with his mother to Paris.
In his youth he became friends with the painter Paul Cezanne and started to
write under the influence of the romantics.
Zola’s
widowed mother had planned a career in law for him, but Zola failed his
baccalaureate examination
To survive he
held odd jobs as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department of
a publishing house. At
that time he started writing literary columns and art reviews
for newspapers. Later he became a political journalist.
Opinionated
and of fiery temper he got in trouble for his writings. An autobiographical
novel got him fired.
According to
some speculations, Zola’s
enemies blocked the chimney of his apartment, causing poisonous fumes to build
up and kill him.
Naturalism eventually
faded
after Zola's death, yet it had a profound influence on American writers such as
Stephen Crane, Upton Sinclair, and Theodore Dreiser, whose novel Sister Carrie is viewed as a
naturalistic novel.
About The Experimental Novel (Le Roman Expérimental)
For most of
his adult life, Zola showed an interest in science, and he was well-versed in
the natural selection theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the theories on
heredity of Prosper Lucas (1805-1885), and almost as importantly, the
experimental method of Claude Bernard.
Therefore,
he felt qualified to apply his own ‘experimental method’ to literature. In
fact, Zola’s ambitious goal was for literature to become a scientific
occupation.
In writing
his essay The Experimental Novel,
Zola wanted to prove three main points: First, that Claude Bernard’s
experimental method could be directly applied to literature. Second: to
distinguish naturalism from realism and romanticism by use of the experimental
method. Third: to counteract criticism from those who called his work immoral.
Today, the essay itself remains as a sober
experiment in scientific writing. It proposes hypotheses or premises, attempts
to prove them by authority, deriving —what seemed to him— scientific
conclusions. Whether one agrees or not with his ideas, the fact remains that
many of his points —though bizarre at the time— wee ironically prophetic.
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