Fcondit d'Emile Zola

This historical and critical study of Zolas Fcondit contributes much to an understanding of how the novel came to be written and of its achievements. Like Travail and Verit, the later books in the series Les Quatre Evangiles, Fcondit has not previously received significant critical attention. This study reveals and interprets the less obvious aspects of the work, its biblical and mythical themes, its sources and genesis. It also adds to our knowledge of Zolas later works through the examination of various ideological currentsparticularly the impact of Malthusianism, its proponents and adversaries, and who among them Zola read in preparing this book. Fcondit deals with the particular problem of Frances declining birth-rate at the end of the nineteenth century and, more generally, with the problem of decadence and cultural renewal. By the time that he wrote Fcondit, Zola had abandoned his naturalist aesthetic of scientific objectivity, if not also his working methods as a novelist. This study shoes how his didactic concerns continually asserted themselves in the structure and the use of rhetorical techniques in Fcondit. Specialists in Zola, and others more generally interested in the French culture of the late nineteenth century, as well as the particular demographic problems that Zola treats in the work, and the relationship of literature to primitive mythology, should find this study of particular interest.