Emile Zola

1. Emile Zola Drama Practitioner Naturalism

2. Time Period • Lived in 1840-1902 • Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century • Events- Napoleonic Wars ends 1815, Eiffel Tower Constructed 1888 Industrial Revolution 1815-1860(Growth in France) Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 • The Dreyfus Affair • Romantic era-

3. Short Biography • Born in Paris in 1840 • His Mother wanted him to do law but he failed his Exam. • Before his breakthrough as a writer he worked as a political Journalist. He did not hide his dislike for Napoleon III for numerous reasons. • He wrote his first major novel Therese Raguin in 1867 • His main output was the collection of novels Les Rougon-Macquart which tells the story of a family through out the generations. • “ I don't want to describe the contemporary society, but a single family, showing how the race is modified by the environment.” • He Died of carbon monoxide poisoning when he was 62 1902

4. Influences • Influenced by:Romantisism, Charles Darwin Claude Bernard(French Psychologist) Hippolyte Taine ( French Historian, critic and influencer of sociological positivism.) • Influenced: Naturalism George Orwell Tom wolfie Jen ten Binks (Brought Zola’s works to the Netherlands)

5. Style • Les Rougon-Macquart - 20 books -is the story of a family throughout the generations during fictional Second French Empire. It shows the respectable and despicable. A great example of French Naturalism • My work, mine, will be something else entirely. The scope will be narrower. I don't want to describe the contemporary society, but a single family, showing how the race is modified by the environment. (...) My big task is to be strictly naturalist, strictly physiologist."

6. Naturalism • "I wish to explain how a family, a small group of human beings, conducts itself in a given social system after blossoming forth and giving birth to ten or twenty members, who, though they may appear, at the first glance, profoundly dissimilar one from the other, are, as analysis demonstrates, most closely linked together from the point of view of affinity. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws. • By resolving the duplex question of temperament and environment, I shall endeavour to discover and follow the thread of connection which leads mathematically from one man to another. And when I have possession of every thread, and hold a complete social group in my hands, I shall show this group at work, participating in an historical period; I shall depict it in action, with all its varied energies, and I shall analyse both the will power of each member, and the general tendency of the whole."--Emile Zola, Paris, July 1, 1871

7. Naturalism • Shows the dark Harshness of life. • Themes such as Death, Sex, Violence Prejudice, Corruption and poverty. • In theatre it refers to creating the Idea of a real life and no un-natural events are portrayed. • Acting is as realistic as possible. Seams natural. • Aims to look as if the audience is looking down on a scene as it happens.

8. Technical components • Light ~ Natural (Light bulbs were invented in 1879 so They may have had them in the end of his career.) • Sound ~ Projection of voice. Theatres sometimes made to accommodate with sonorous walls and shape. • Costume ~ Depends on the wealth of the theatre but otherwise to fit the character e.g. commoner clothing for a poor character. • Set ~ Plain with normal wooden furniture. Nothing un realistic. • Proscenium stage ~ A Proscenium theatre is when a picture frame is place around the stage. No audience around the stage. Arch ways across the top.

9. Directing • The purpose of Naturalism in theatre is to convey a situation that would give them impression to the audience that they were looking at a slice of life.