Emile Zola (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views), edited by Harold Bloom

Zolian lit crit from the profound to the arcane

Part of the Bloom’s Modern Critical Views series from Chelsea House Publishers, the book simply entitled Emile Zola was published in 2004. Harold Bloom, renowned and/or notorious literary critic and professor, is the namesake of the series as well as the editor of record for the book. Given that there are over a hundred books in the series, however, it is unclear how active Bloom actually was in the selection of the contents, but he does supply a three-page introduction. The book contains essays on Zola by 13 literary critics. All of the chapters were taken from previously published books and journals going as far back as 1952, but most selections are from the 1990s. As is often the case with scholarly edited collections, the contents are varied, including the good and the bad, the profound and the obscure, the obvious and the insightful. I am not a literary scholar, just a Zola fan who has read his complete works. At least half of the chapters in this book helped me to see Zola’s writing in new and interesting ways, so overall I consider the reading of this volume a productive learning experience.

The most interesting essays in the book take a broad view of Zola’s life and career, rather than focusing on the minutiae of a single work. William J. Berg’s chapter on “Zola’s Theory and Criticism” draws heavily on Zola’s nonfiction work The Experimental Novel and helps to enlarge the reader’s understanding of Zola’s conception of naturalism. A selected chapter from Frederick Brown’s 1995 biography Zola: A Life provides some much-needed contextual background on the genesis of the Rougon-Macquart saga, as well as addressing what Zola owed to Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo. Jonathan F. Krell draws some interesting parallels between the plots of the Rougon-Macquart novels and the mythical tales of Mt. Olympus, while Henri Mitterand makes a very convincing case for Zola’s naturalism as the precursor to surrealism.

Zola’s novels The Fortune of the Rougons, The Sin of Father Mouret, Nana, Germinal, and Le Rêve (The Dream), as well as his novella The Death of Olivier Bécaille are all singled out for inspection by individual chapters devoted specifically to them. Sometimes the focus can be quite concentrated, for example when Hollie Markland Harder uses one particular symbol of a statue to expound on gender theory in The Sin of Father Mouret. Others venture farther afield. P. M. Wetherill’s essay “Flaubert, Zola, Proust and Paris” is mostly about Proust and barely mentions Zola, making one wonder if the editor actually read the article before selecting it for inclusion (not that there’s anything wrong with Wetherill’s writing). Similarly, Nicholas Rennie’s piece on “Benjamin and Zola” does more to define Walter Benjamin’s thought than Zola’s. Anthony Savile’s chapter reaches beyond lit crit to delve into the conflicting aesthetic philosophies of Locke, Hume, and Kant.

As expected from literary criticism, the book is full of spoilers, but chances are if you are considering reading this book you’ve probably read many of Zola’s works already. Several of these chapters were taken from French Studies journals, so a knowledge of the French language is assumed. The chapters are written in English, but the quotes from Zola’s literature are often presented untranslated. I have roughly a high school knowledge of French, but having previously read Zola’s works (in English) I didn’t have much trouble keeping up with the French excerpts. I would recommend this volume to any serious student of Zola. Not all the essays are compelling reading, but many are interesting, and a few are fascinating.
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