The Belly of Paris

Émile Zola (1840-1902) embraced his century in a way no French writer had done since Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). His ambition was to represent-as Balzac had done, but less methodically than Zola-the whole life of his period. Zola is the quintessential novelist of modernity, understood in terms of an overwhelming sense of tumultuous change. The motor of change was the rapid expansion of capitalism, with all that that entailed in terms of new forms of social practice and economic organization, heightened political pressures, and the altered shapes of the city. Zola was fascinated by change, and specifically by the emergence of a new, mass society.

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Avainsanat: economic organization, political pressures, society