Les Rougon-Macquart Totally Explained

Everything about Les Rougon-macquart totally explained

Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to French novelist Émile Zola's greatest literary achievement, a monumental twenty-novel cycle about the exploits of various members of an extended family during the French Second Empire, from the coup d'état of December 1851 which established Napoleon III as Emperor through to the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 which brought the Empire down. The novels in the cycle, in order of publication in the original French, are as follows:

La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
La Curée (1871-2)
Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
L'Assommoir (1877)
Une Page d'amour (1878)
Nana (1880)
Pot-Bouille (1882)
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
La Joie de vivre (1884)
Germinal (1885)
L'Œuvre (1886)
La Terre (1887)
Le Rêve (1888)
La Bête humaine (1890)
L'Argent (1891)
La Débâcle (1892)
Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

Almost all of the main protagonists for each novel are introduced in the first book, La Fortune des Rougon. The last novel in the cycle, Le Docteur Pascal, contains a lengthy chapter tying up virtually all the loose ends from the other novels. In between, there's no "best sequence" in which to read the novels in the cycle, as they're not in chronological order and indeed are impossible to arrange into such an order. Although some of the novels in the cycle are direct sequels to one another, many of them follow on directly from the last chapters of La Fortune des Rougon, and there's a great deal of chronological overlap between the books; there are numerous recurring characters and several of them make "guest" appearances in novels centred on other members of the family.
   All 20 of the novels have been translated into English under various titles (details of which are listed under each novel's individual entry), but some of the translations are out of print or badly outdated and censored. Excellent modern English translations are widely available for nine of the most popular novels in the cycle and more are being commissioned all the time.
   Part of the reason for creating a 20-novel saga was to explore both the drives of human nature, as well as life during the Second Empire under Napoleon III. The Rougon-Macquart cycle looks at two sides of a family--the legitimate Rougons and the illegitimate line of Macquarts. Zola tried to link heredity with behavior. So, we've the high-born Rougons involved in politics (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) and medicine (Le Docteur Pascal) and the low-born Macquarts involved in alcoholism (L'Assommoir), prostitution (Nana), and homicide (La Bête humaine). To a certain degree, readers can see the criminal aspects of the characters as being as much a part of their economic circumstances as their genetics. As a naturalist, Zola also gave detailed descriptions of urban and rural settings, and different types of businesses. Le Ventre de Paris, for example, has a detailed description of the cheese market in Paris at the time. This is built upon Balzac's Comédie humaine concept, which also charted different parts of French life.
   As a political reflection of life under Napoleon III, the novel La Conquête de Plassans looks at how an ambitious priest infiltrates a small Provence town one family at a time, starting with the Rougons. La Débâcle takes place during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and depicts Napoleon III's downfall. Son Excellence also looks at political life, and Pot-Bouille and Au Bonheur des Dames look at middle class life in Paris.
   Zola wrote the novels after the fall of Napoleon III.

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