Talk:Émile Zola

Zola dictionary

I've been integerating material from the public domain Zola dictionary, if anyone else want to lend a hand it's available from,

http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04/zladc10.txt

--Imran 22:13 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)

I'd be wary of using Patterson as a source - the Zola Dictionary dates from 1912 (so it's not any more authoritative than the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica), and almost everything he says is out of date and/or contradicted by later Zola studies. In particular, he is writing from a prudish Edwardian English perspective - the Vizetelly translations that are still in print today, bowdlerised first by Henry and then re-censored and largely rewritten by Ernest, are not taken seriously by any student of literature except as quaint examples of Victorian censorship gone mad. The Lutetian Society versions are also very widely available, having been reprinted several times since Patterson was writing; these translations have also all been superseded, with the possible exception of La Curée. His description of the Vizetelly trial is a little inaccurate too; a good source of information concerning the trial, complete with excerpts from the judge and counsel in the case, is Graham King's Garden of Zola. Fosse8

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Croat

Zola is listed in List of Croats. Why?

I'm not sure to be honest. See that talk page. --Shallot 12:40, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

First English Translations

See the Wikipedia article on Henry Vizetelly the English Publisher, who was prosecuted for publishing The Earth (and Discussion Page).

Vernon White 15:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

broken link

I removed this link as it was broken. here it is if anyone wants to fiddle:

• Family tree of the Rougon-Macquart families

Felonati 18:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Bad link

The link titled "Travail" links to a stub on a musical group. Don't know how to fix it, but it's not right.

Paragraphing

This is my pet bugbear, but the paragraphing in the biography section needs work, preferably by the editors who've written the existing material and therefore are most comfortable with the section. At the moment, they're all one sentence paras, even when there's an obvious thematic thread (i.e. Dreyfus etc), and this makes things confusing. Sound reasonable? Ajcounter 15:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

pronunciation

How do you pronounce Emile? Is it "EH-MEEL"? Or "Emily"? Is "Emily" a mispronunciation of the French, but an acceptable Americanized pronunciation?

It's "Ay-meel". "Emily" is flat wrong no matter what country you're in. 84.92.8.221 14:43, 19 July 2007 (UTC) (fosse8)

[e.mil zɔ.la] -Treisijs (talk) 14:44, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Accent on name

Normal correct French usage is not to put an accent on capitals, so I propose moving the article to Emile Zola. Ty 01:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Really? Why does French Wikipedia also use the accent mark? --D. Monack | talk 01:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

It is a matter of some debate, and certainly you can find texts that don't put accents on capitals. But it's hard to get more authoritative than the Académie française, which does recommend the accentuation of all capitals: [1]. Lesgles (talk) 01:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Ty 01:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Common French from France usage omits accents from capitals, for reasons of presentation, and because you know it's there. If you capitalize an ordinary vocabulary word with an accent, you often omit the accent. But you know it's there.

Normal Canadian French usage tends to include the accent, to stress, Hey, we are using French here, people! not English (dammit)!!

Regardless of how it is presented for the sake of convenience or aesthetics, the accent is still there.

Varlaam (talk) 16:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC) (Canada)

List of Works

I know that lists are 'bad', but its essential to at least provide a list of his major works, many of which have no mention at all in the present article. Caspar esq. (talk) 20:05, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Please Translate Titles

I do not speak French so there is no way for me to recognize any of Émile Zola's famous works. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.92.16.249 (talk) 20:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

durance

Is a Émile Zola came to the prison in practice?

The article says that he escaped to England. And write here (1898) that he entered the jail. Who is right?

Note: This message translation from Hebrew by Google translation

--ישראל קרול (talk) 15:58, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Get rid of "Extent of Zola’s achievement" or change it

This section is clearly subjectively written, without citations. Wikipedia is not the place for editorializing or independent literary criticism. I actually find what you've written interesting, but this just isn't the forum for it. Ironically, maybe you could simply post what you wrote to a blog and then cite to that ;). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.20.227.156 (talk) 06:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Zola's Naïs Micoulin

This work becomes an opera by Alfred Bruneau and a film starring Fernandel.
But it is not listed.
I presume, therefore, that it is a conte.

I am not familiar with Zola's work in detail.
Are a number of his "tales" of major consequence? Should the article be noting these by name? If they don't justify independent articles, should these tales be discussed in some detail here?
Varlaam (talk) 16:29, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

adaptations

I'm sure there are too many adaptations to list, but particularly for english-language wikipedia the major multipart series of adaptations on BBC Radio 4 are surely worth mentioning? It's a serialisation of all 20 Rougon-Macquart novels in coherent form. (and it's excellent). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pydll — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.104.165 (talk) 19:41, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

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October 2016

This article has had an "original research" notification at the top for over 4 years. You'd think one of you would do your diddly dang job and fix it. 02:29, 24 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.161.253.178 (talk)

Quasi-scientific Purpose

Hi all,

I have a few concerns with the "Quasi-scientific Purpose". It's an important section, but gets a few things wrong and leaves a few things vague. Zola didn't just see the experimental novel as a psychological study; it was also a social one. He also makes clear in his theoretical texts that "dispassionate observation" isn't sufficient. He believed it was necessary to modify the trajectories of the character and analyze the results; he really did see his novels as experiments. The meaning of the term "dossier" is not clear, and doesn't tell us much about his research and writing methods. I also don't see why we need these cherry-picked examples at the end; why are these novels of importance, and not others? At the very least, the wording could be changed here. I'm happy to make these edits and cite sources. Let me know what you all think. Thank you!! Jæ Orris (talk) 04:40, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jæ Orris:, as far as why the examples are there at the end, the user who added them was User:Aimsworthy, who contributed almost the entirety of the last four sections of the article back in 2010, but who unfortunately is no longer active. As to what "dossier" is doing in there, it appears to be a carryover from section #Méthode de travail et style of the French article, where it appears as: "Le travail de Zola romancier commence donc par la constitution d'un dossier préparatoire", and includes two footnotes. (The rest of that paragraph goes into more detail about Zola's dossiers.) I suspect you'll find the answer to a lot of your questions about what's in this section, and the other three, by reference to the French article.

By the way, if we are going to retain a mention about this in the English article, then I am not in favor of "dossier" as the best English term here to translate dossier préparatoire as it doesn't given a good sense of what it actually was for Zola. I would use something more like "fact sheet", "portfolio", "summary notes"", "overview", "brief", "sketch" (in the text sense of the word), "preparatory notes" or some such. There are even three English words with a soupçon of French flavor that could fit here, like aperçu, précis, or résumé. Mathglot (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot:, thanks for the info. I may make some minor edits near the end, and even add a few more examples with citations. I agree, "dossier" isn't a cognate between French and English; in literary criticism, they are indeed often referred to as "Preparatory Sketches/Notes". I'll add a few more details on Zola's process and will try to avoid ambiguity, as his dossiers did indeed include notes and sketches/schemata. I'll be sure to reference the French version as well. Jæ Orris (talk) 21:16, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jæ Orris:, sounds good; ping me when you think you have a stable version, or anytime you feel like some feedback. (Btw, in a technical violation of WP:TPO, I altered your edit above, but only to add an additional level of indent, as is the convention here at Wikipedia, without altering your message. You can have a look at discussion-reply conventions at Wikipedia, at WP:THREAD.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Influence on the rise of Impressionism

There's nothing in this bio about his role in popularizing and defending the Impressionists. I'm currently working on content about this for the article on the Batignolles group, but I was hoping to find more already here. As it turns out, according to Duret (1910), Zola was instrumental in bringing Manet and other painters together, many of whom would later become known as Impressionists. Hemmings (1958) concurs, referring to Zola's "Thursday evening gatherings" circa 1866 as a precursor to the later Batignolles group, out of which Impressionism would emerge. Viriditas (talk) 22:14, 17 August 2021 (UTC)