Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin

Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze (University of Durham)

Ed. by Tim Unwin, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.05: French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century , 1800-1900.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Nigel Harkness (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield), Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1867

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Naturalist
Novel

Resources

Even though Thérèse Raquin (1867) is not Zola’s first novel (La Confession de Claude [Claude’s Confession] was written two years earlier in 1865), it is usually regarded as his first masterpiece and a worthy precursor to the famous twenty-volume cycle of Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale d’une famille sous le Second Empire [The Rougon-Macquart: A Social and Natural History of a Family Under the Second Empire] (1871-1893). In this novel of adulterous sex, murder, remorse and madness, Zola first applies to telling effect his newly-acquired naturalist theories, as he claims in his preface to the second edition of the novel in …

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2671 words

Citation: Dousteyssier-Khoze, Catherine. "Thérèse Raquin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11307, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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