Search results for ""author emile zola""

El paraíso de los gatos es una fábula sobre la vida de los gatos, esos buenos amigos de los hombres. El filósofo francés Taine, amigo de Zola, dijo que habiendo estudiado detenidamente a los filósofos y a los gatos, encontraba mucho más sabios a los gatos. El cuento plantea una interesante discusión. Debemos buscar en la vida la seguridad ante todo? O hay otras cosas que quizás valgan más la pena, como la búsqueda de aventuras o de ideales? El simpático gato protagonista de esta historia nos cuenta con toda sinceridad su experiencia y sus razones, y también las de sus compañeros de aventuras, y con ello nos trasladan estas preguntas a los lectores.

Read more less

ESTOS RELATOS MARCAN LA CIMA EN ZOLA, POR ENCIMA DE SUS NOVELAS MÁS CONOCIDAS.Las narraciones incluidas en el presente libro superan, sin duda, sus novelas de mayor renombre, lastradas, en muchos casos,por una extensión excesiva y un exceso de tremendismo pesimista en su descripción de la sociedad de la época. Escritos para ser publicados en revistas, elaborados con anterioridad a sus laboriosos ciclos novelescos, se puede decir que casi baten al coetáneo y brillante Maupassant en su mismo terreno -el naturalismo límpido, emotivo, impactante- y manifiestan una vertiente de Zola que, de haber abundado en la misma, lo hubiera convertido, quizá, en un autor tan vigente y atractivo como son esos otros grandes realistas decimonónicos, Flaubert y Balzac. Originales, llenos de emoción, estos relatos propician una lectura apasionante y manifiestan una faceta lúdica a la vez que muy humana del autor que finalmente resultó, quizá por desgracia, ofuscada por su condición de escritor socialmente c

Read more less

Con La conquista de Plassans (1874), la cuarta novela del ciclo, Zola vuelve al lugar de origen de los Rougon-Macquart. Aquí, en la engañosa tranquilidad de la provincia, descrita con un ojo agudísimo y sarcástico, es un matrimonio entre primos de las dos ramas de la familia, Marthe Rougon y François Mouret, quien va a hospedar a un inquilino no menos sospechoso: un extraño sacerdote, sucio y pagado de sí mismo, que en poco tiempo se dispone a regir los destinos de Plassans y a influir en las decisiones de sus ciudadanos. El matrimonio verá poco a poco cómo no sólo su casa y su ciudad dejan de ser suyos, sino cómo ellos mismos son desposeídos de su personalidad, abocados al éxtasis y a la locura.

Read more less

His haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics.Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past. The only way he can rest is by forcing her to help him murder the man involved, but there is a witness - Jacques Lantier, a fellow railway employee. Jacques, meanwhile, must contend with his own terrible impulses, for every time he sees a woman he feels the overwhelming desire to kill. In the company of Roubaud's wife, Severine, he finds peace briefly, yet his feelings for her soon bring disasterous consequences. A key work in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, The Beast Within is one of Zola's most dark and violent works - a tense thriller of political corruption and a graphic exploration of the criminal mind.Roger Whitehouse's vivid translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Zola's depiction of the railways, politics and the legal system and the influence of the studies of criminology and the Jack the Ripper murders on his novel. This edition also includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading and notes.Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years, including Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), The Beast Within (1890), Nana (1880), and The Drinking Den (1877).If you enjoyed The Beast Within, you might like Zola's The Drinking Den, also available in Penguin Classics.

Read more less

Now the basis for the major BBC tv adaptation The Paradise, this is a lavish drama and a timeless commentary on consumer capitalism. The Penguin Classics edition of Émile Zola's The Ladies' Delight is based on an acclaimed, vivid and modern translation by Robin Buss, who has also introduced the novel.The Ladies' Delight is the glittering Paris department store run by Octave Mouret. He has used charm and drive to become director of this mighty emporium, unscrupulously exploiting his young female staff and seducing his lady customers with luxurious displays of shimmering silks, satins, velvets and lace. Then Denise Baudu, a naïve provincial girl, becomes an assistant at the store - and Mouret discovers that he in turn can also be enchanted. With its greedy customers, gossiping staff and vibrant sense of theatre, The Ladies' Delight (Au Bonheur des Dames in the original French) is one of the most richly exciting novels in Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart cycle.This edition also contains a bibliography, introduction, chronology and explanatory notes.Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction. His principal work, Les Rougon-Macquart, is a panorama of mid-19th century French life, in a cycle of 20 novels which Zola wrote over a period of 22 years, including Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), The Beast Within (1890), Nana (1880), and The Drinking Den (1877).'A complete page-turner about the consumer society, greed, fashion and instant gratification'India Knight'A fine translation'The Times Literary Supplement

Read more less

"I recall the long hours I sat for him... From time to time, as I posed, half-asleep, I looked at the artist standing at his easel, with features drawn, clear-eyed, engrossed in his work. He had forgotten me, he no longer knew I was there, he simply copied me, as if I were some kind of human beast, with a concentration and artistic integrity that I have seen nowhere else." Zola's writings on Manet, the most important of which are presented in this volume, were the first to identify the painter's seminal role in the emergence of modern art.

Read more less

'It was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.' The Kill (La Curée) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world. Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire (1852-70) and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure. The all-pervading promiscuity of the new Paris is reflected in the dissolute and frenetic lives of an unscrupulous property speculator, Saccard, his neurotic wife Renée, and her dandified lover, Saccard's son Maxime. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less

'I really don't understand how people can blame a priest so much, when he strays from the path.' The Sin of Abbé Mouret tells the compelling story of the young priest Serge Mouret. Striving after spiritual purity and sanctity, he lives a life of constant prayer, but his neglect of all physical needs leads to serious illness, followed by amnesia. No longer knowing he is a priest, he falls in love with his nurse Albine. Together, like a latter-day Adam and Eve, they roam through an Eden-like garden called the 'Paradou', seeking a forbidden tree in whose shade they will make love. Zola memorably shows their gradual awakening to sexuality, and his poetic descriptions of the luxuriant and beautiful Paradou create a lyrical celebration of Nature. When Serge regains his memory and recalls his priestly vows, anguish inevitably follows. The whole story, with its numerous biblical parallels, becomes a poetic reworking of the Fall of Man and a questioning of the very meaning of innocence and sin. Zola explores the conflict between Church and Nature, the sterility of the Church and the fertility of Nature. This new translation includes a wide-ranging and helpful introduction and explanatory notes.

Read more less

A gripping psychological thriller adapted for the stage by Émile Zola himself from his own notorious novel, in a version by Nicholas Wright. Stifled by an oppressive mother-in-law and a sickly husband, Thérèse Raquin falls passionately for another man. Their feverish affair drives the lovers to an act of terrible desperation, which catapults them headlong into a world more claustrophobic than the one they sought to destroy. This English version of Thérèse Raquin was first staged at the National Theatre, London, in 2006.

Read more less