We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE REVIVAL OF NATURALISM 223
in one line, with their rifles raised to their shoulders, shot dead whilst in the very act of firing. . . ."
Surely this is Zola, the master of film scenario description, of the selection of detail close ups for
expressive purpose?,
Zola composed his novels strictly according to a set plan, in fact with such highly organized method that a comparison with the preparation of the film scenario is inevitable. Block by block, chapter by chapter, brick by brick, documenting and gathering material as he proceeded, Zola progressed from novel to novel in the building of the vast tower of the " RougonMacquart " series, twenty volumes in all. " The Rougon-Macquart, Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire."
Firstly, he would select his theme, soliloquize upon it, choose his central character from the genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquart, proceed to his summary plan, then through succeeding stages of a detailed plan, environment, notes of other characters, for all of which he amassed a pile of documents. The whole of the preparatory work was elaborate and calculating. The final writing and assembling of the book Zola would call the " editing." " He goes at it calmly, methodically. He writes four manuscript pages every day, almost without crossing out a word," writes Paul Alexis. ' There were three primary sources of information: books which related to the past; testimony, either through written books or direct conversation, by persons at hand or experts; and finally