Zola, Émile (1840–1902)

Émile Zola, a politically influential 19th-century French author and founder of the naturalist movement in literature, defined his career through biting literary criticism of Napoleon III as well as the French government. Zola published his most politically controversial work on January 13, 1898: J'accuse. J'accuse was published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper, L'Aurore, and began what is known as the Dreyfus Affair. Zola criticized the French government of anti-Semitism for its imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army. Zola was tried and convicted on charges of libel against the French government on February 23, 1898. J'accuse, the subsequent trial, and the conviction of Zola increased the deep political differences between the reactionary army, the church, and the commercial society and contributed to the increase of liberalization in France. Zola fled to England to avoid imprisonment but returned shortly after, because Dreyfus was cleared of his charges.

Zola was born in Paris to François Zola, an Italian engineer who gained French citizenship, and Émilie Aubert. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in 1843, where they lived until 1858. Zola's father died in 1847. During his years in Aix-en-Provence, Zola became acquainted with the painter Paul Cézanne. Even during his young writing days, Zola was never clear of controversy. He published an autobiographical novel, La Confession de Claude, in 1865 whose distasteful subject matter the French police did not appreciate, and he was consequently fired from his position at a local publishing company.

Perhaps Zola's greatest literary achievement was the 20-novel series known together as les Rougon-Macquart. Les Rougon-Macquart is the naturalistic history of two branches of a family under France's Second Empire. Zola founded and epitomized the naturalist writing style in les Rougon, in which Zola followed strict scientific research guidelines, including visiting coal mines for his novel Germinal. He kept thick files full of interviews with experts, character sketches, and historical environmental data. Zola believed that writing should be done with the most scientific rigor possible, because human behavior is fully determined by economic environment, heredity, and emotions rather than free human choice. For that reason, it was necessary for Zola to have well-documented research of the times in which he was writing so that he would be able to paint a clear picture of the characters and their actions. He succeeded in doing so, especially in his novel L'Assommoir, published in 1877. The novel made him the best-known writer in France because of its subject, the Rougon-Macquart family and their drunken tendencies. Throughout les Rougon-Macquart, Zola tackled such topics as proletarian working conditions, industrialization, alcoholism, overeating, and generally the overabundance of earthly pleasures in which the family indulged, which led to their ultimate demise.

Zola died on September 28, 1902. He succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning from a clogged chimney in his apartment while he slept. Speculation abounded that his enemies were to blame and that his death was no accident. No foul play was ever discovered. His remains were moved in 1908 to the Pantheon, Paris, as a final show of respect by the French government for his lifetime of contributions.

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