Editing Émile Zola (section)

==Characterisation==
[[Image:Manet, Edouard - Portrait of Emile Zola.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Édouard Manet]], ''Portrait of Émile Zola'', 1868, [[Musée d'Orsay]]]]
Zola strongly claimed that Naturalist literature is an experimental analysis of human psychology.{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}} Considering this claim, many critics, such as [[György Lukács]],<ref>György Lukács, ''Studies in European Realism. A Sociological Survey of the Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki and Others'', London: 1950, pp. 91–95.</ref> find Zola strangely poor at creating lifelike and memorable characters in the manner of [[Honoré de Balzac]] or [[Charles Dickens]], despite his ability to evoke powerful crowd scenes. It was important to Zola that no character should appear ''larger than'' life;<ref>Émile Zola, ''Les Romanciers naturalistes'', Paris: 1903, pp. 126–129.</ref> but the criticism that his characters are "cardboard" is substantially more damaging. Zola, by refusing to make any of his characters larger than life (if that is what he has indeed done), did not inhibit himself from also achieving [[Verisimilitude (fiction)|verisimilitude]].

Although Zola found it scientifically and artistically unjustifiable to create larger-than-life characters, his work presents some larger-than-life symbols which, like the mine Le Voreux in ''[[Germinal (novel)|Germinal]]'',{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}} take on the nature of a surrogate human life. The mine, the still in ''[[L'Assommoir]]'' and the locomotive La Lison in ''[[La Bête humaine]]'' impress the reader with the vivid reality of human beings.{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}} The great natural processes of seedtime and harvest, death and renewal in ''[[La Terre]]'' are instinct with a vitality which is not human but is the elemental energy of life.<ref>Letter from Émile Zola to Jules Lemaître, 14 March 1885.</ref> Human life is raised to the level of the mythical as the hammerblows of [[Titan (mythology)|Titans]] are seemingly heard underground at Le Voreux, or as in ''[[La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret]]'', the walled park of Le Paradou encloses a re-enactment—and restatement—of the [[Book of Genesis]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}}