Status
Available
Call number
Series
Genres
Collection
Publication
OUP Oxford (2020), 336 pages
Description
Classic Literatur Fictio HTML: Doctor Pascal concludes Zola's epic Rougon-Macquart series. Pascal has spent his thirty years as a physician cataloging his family and identifying their often unedifying exploits as the specific results of heredity and innateness. His niece at first believes this work to be an arrogant denial of God's omnipotence, but as Pascal reveals the details of the Rougon-Macquart family tree to her, she begins to see the value in his work.
User reviews
LibraryThing member thorold
In a typical Zola gesture, the Rougon-Macquart series comes with a decorative pair of bookends to hold it in place on the shelf: La fortune des Rougon at the start and Le Docteur Pascal at the end. The first book, set against the background of the coup d'état of 1851, introduced us to all the
The plot — such as it is — fits into all this rather oddly. It starts out as a conflict between blinkered superstition and scientific objectivity, but we soon realise that Pascal is not so much a rational scientist as a self-deluding crank, who piles up the results of his unscientific "research" in a cupboard without a thought of publishing anything. As well as being an expert on heredity who is determined to make a baby with his own niece... Zola has either lost his own faith in science somewhere along the line, or he's let a good story of sex and obsession take over from dry theoretical models. Probably the latter.
Not one of the unmissable books in the series, but it was nice to get the "where are they now" stuff.
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characters and their complicated genealogy; in this last book, set in 1872-4, after the fall of the Second Empire, we get a handy summary of what's happened to everyone, together with an exposition of how all this fits in with Zola's slightly eccentric theories of heredity. The plot — such as it is — fits into all this rather oddly. It starts out as a conflict between blinkered superstition and scientific objectivity, but we soon realise that Pascal is not so much a rational scientist as a self-deluding crank, who piles up the results of his unscientific "research" in a cupboard without a thought of publishing anything. As well as being an expert on heredity who is determined to make a baby with his own niece... Zola has either lost his own faith in science somewhere along the line, or he's let a good story of sex and obsession take over from dry theoretical models. Probably the latter.
Not one of the unmissable books in the series, but it was nice to get the "where are they now" stuff.
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Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1893
Physical description
336 p.
ISBN
0198746164 / 9780198746164
Local notes
French title: Le Docteur Pascal (1893)