L'Assommoir

Émile ZolaProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.6
Word count
498K words
Chapters
50

Tags

Foreign Language Books NaturalismFamily BondsHuman NatureComplex HumanitySocial CritiqueDocumentary NarrativeParisian Scene

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.L'Assommoir by Émile ZolaAuthor: Zola, Émile, 1840-1902,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jul 1, 2005

Editor's review

L'Assommoir is a pivotal novel in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series, taking the daily life of Paris's working poor as its lens and tracing how poverty, alcoholism, and the labouring environment erode human lives. With an almost documentary precision, Zola records the spaces of workshop, laundry, tavern, and rented room, showing how naturalist fiction turns social observation into narrative force. The value of this novel lies less in a twisting plot than in its cool presentation of the fate of the nineteenth-century urban poor and its deliberate recreation of working-class speech. For readers interested in French naturalism or in the crossroads of literature and social history, it is an unavoidable text. Note that this is the English translation offered by Project Gutenberg; its style is old-fashioned, so readers should be alert to the period flavour of the target language and may wish to consult the French original or a reliable Chinese translation for key passages.

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Reading tips

  1. Read summaries of the preceding and following books in the series first, to place the characters within the family genealogy before starting this one.
  2. Keep pen and paper to note spatial scenes such as the tavern and the laundry, and observe how environment drives the characters' fate.
  3. Mark outdated usages or slang as you go and look them up after finishing a chapter, rather than interrupting the reading rhythm.
  4. Read alongside other works in the series and compare Zola's narrative strategies in handling characters from different classes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50

FAQ

Is this the French original or an English translation? According to Project Gutenberg's catalogue information, the language of this book is English, so it is an English translation. The translation dates from an early period and shows traces of old-fashioned English, which readers should bear in mind. To check the original wording, consult the French version separately.
Can I read this without having read the earlier books in the series? You can, but the characters here are linked by family to other works in Les Rougon-Macquart. Understanding the series' overall framework and main character relationships beforehand makes it easier to grasp the situations and motives of the characters and reduces confusion caused by missing background.
Is the version information for this ebook reliable? The book is released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook, and the catalogue information includes author, language, and classification number. The text was prepared and proofread by volunteers and is generally readable, but it lacks the annotations and textual notes of a scholarly edition, so quotations should be checked independently.
What historical background should I know before reading? The book touches on housing conditions, workshop labour, drinking customs, and the lack of social protection among the Parisian working class in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Some prior knowledge of urban poverty during French industrialisation helps in understanding the characters' logic of behaviour and the author's intent as a social observer.

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About the author

Émile Zola Author · French · 1840–1902

Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, critic and political activist, one of the most prominent French writers of the late nineteenth century and the founder of the theory of naturalism. Through his twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart he constructed a vast social panorama, with representative works including Germinal, L'Assommoir, Au Bonheur des Dames and La Bête humaine. These works often take workers, peasants and ordinary city people as their protagonists, presenting poverty, labour and desire with meticulous observation and an almost documentary style, calm yet powerful. During the Dreyfus Affair Zola published the famous open letter J'Accuse, intervening in public affairs as an intellectual in the cause of justice. The library holds 93 of his works, including several translations.