Aims and Objectives :

Aims :

The aim of this subject is to encourage you to analyse the novel writing of one of France's key literary figures in a critically nuanced fashion.

Objectives :

By the end of the syllabus you should be able to :

• Situate Zola's novels within the social and political history of the Second Empire and the Third Republic.
• Describe the doctrine of literary naturalism and analyse Zola's role within this movement.
• Question the assumptions of naturalist writing in the light of recent theories of literary representation.
• Demonstrate the extent to which Zola's writing fulfils his publicised aims as a novelist and show how it moves beyond such dogma.
• Dissect examples of Zola's prose using the techniques of close reading.