Naturalism is based on the sense of Reality. But Zola broke this one in the second part of his novel La Faute de l’abbé Mouret, by the description of the garden named « Paradou ». As usual, he used numerous documents and he inserted lists of names (flowers, plants, trees) into his novel ; but the result is not the same as in the other novels containing lists of names of foodstuffs (Le Ventre de Paris) or clothes (Au Bonheur des dames). The reference vanishes because Zola often accumulates names of plants unknown although existing ; besides, he multiplies metaphors, so that it is impossible to visualize Paradou, which is a strange creation. The description of the garden distorts and even destroys reality but builds a poetic object.
In The Rougon-Macquart Emile Zola uses History as a framework for his cycle of novels. However, rather than in following the chronological order or in recounting the major events of the Second Empire, Zola is mainly interested in criticising the period in question. Referring to the reign of Napoleon III as a ‘closed circle,’ he strives to show that History repeats itself and that it has no meaning. In his last series, The Gospels, Zola precisely tries to recapture this meaning by underscoring the progress of humanity. But while history holds an important place from The Fortune of the Rougons through The Downfall to Rome, we must not forget that the novelist’s method also resembles that of a historian as both use documents which they select according to their importance and which they integrate into their discourse. Thus, the novel remains a ‘fable,’ that is to say, fiction, though it is still a documentary fable that guarantees its own historical veracity.
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