The Climate of Naturalism: Zola’s Atmospheres

This article makes a case for reading Émile Zola’s naturalism as an ecological realism. Representations of weather in Zola’s novels blur traditional distinctions between narration and description, as even ostensibly atmospheric weather emerges from the background to precipitate plot. Recasting this distinction as a difference of scale, I argue that Zola’s novels generate a sense of climate by drawing attention to the mutual modulation of humans and landscapes over time, both within and beyond the bounds of the Rougon-Macquart.