Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s – has been published and translated in over one hundred countries and has additionally inspired five film adaptations and two television productions.
Germinal was written between April 1884 and January 1885. It was first serialized between November 1884 and February 1885 in the periodical Gil Blas, then in March 1885 published as a book.
Summary : The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise. The young migrant worker arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his
Author's Biography : Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (/ˈzoʊlə/; French: [e.mil zo.la]; 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'accuse. Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.
Zola was born in Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola (originally Francesco Zola), was an Italian engineer, born in Venice in 1795, who engineered the Zola Dam in Aix-en-Provence[6] and his mother, Émilie Aubert, was French. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast when Émile was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend Paul Cézanne soon joined him. Zola started to write in the romantic style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his Baccalauréat examination twice. Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department for a publisher (Hachette).
Extrait : The man had set out from Marchiennes about two o'clock. He walked with long strides, shivering
beneath his worn cotton jacket and corduroy breeches. A small parcel tied in a check handkerchief
troubled him much, and he pressed it against his side, sometimes with one elbow, sometimes with
the other, so that he could slip to the bottom of his pockets both the benumbed hands that bled
beneath the lashes of the wind. A single idea occupied his head--the empty head of a workman
without work and without lodging--the hope that the cold would be less keen after sunrise. For an
hour he went on thus, when on the left, two kilometres from Montsou, he saw red flames, three
fires burning in the open air and apparently suspended. At first he hesitated, half afraid. Then he
could not resist the painful need to warm his hands for a moment.
The steep road led downwards, and everything disappeared. The man saw on his right a paling, a
wall of coarse planks shutting in a line of rails, while a grassy slope rose on the left
Germinal was written between April 1884 and January 1885. It was first serialized between November 1884 and February 1885 in the periodical Gil Blas, then in March 1885 published as a book.
Summary : The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise. The young migrant worker arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his
Author's Biography : Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (/ˈzoʊlə/; French: [e.mil zo.la]; 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'accuse. Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.
Zola was born in Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola (originally Francesco Zola), was an Italian engineer, born in Venice in 1795, who engineered the Zola Dam in Aix-en-Provence[6] and his mother, Émilie Aubert, was French. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast when Émile was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend Paul Cézanne soon joined him. Zola started to write in the romantic style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his Baccalauréat examination twice. Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department for a publisher (Hachette).
Extrait : The man had set out from Marchiennes about two o'clock. He walked with long strides, shivering
beneath his worn cotton jacket and corduroy breeches. A small parcel tied in a check handkerchief
troubled him much, and he pressed it against his side, sometimes with one elbow, sometimes with
the other, so that he could slip to the bottom of his pockets both the benumbed hands that bled
beneath the lashes of the wind. A single idea occupied his head--the empty head of a workman
without work and without lodging--the hope that the cold would be less keen after sunrise. For an
hour he went on thus, when on the left, two kilometres from Montsou, he saw red flames, three
fires burning in the open air and apparently suspended. At first he hesitated, half afraid. Then he
could not resist the painful need to warm his hands for a moment.
The steep road led downwards, and everything disappeared. The man saw on his right a paling, a
wall of coarse planks shutting in a line of rails, while a grassy slope rose on the left
