Current Trends in Zola Scholarship

ZOLA CRITICISM 323 plans for a drama on I Adam Unparadized.' No future criticism will be able to ignore aconnection so sOlidly and imaginatively established. It is worth recalling, however, the limits of the masque as model for Milton's poetry. The points of contact usually pertain to what can be visualized - for example, the opposed thrones of God and Satan, each surrounded by appropriate debate, dance and song, recall the manner in which the chairs of state of the noble peer and Comus were placed at the opposite ends of the performing space of Milton's Ludlow masque. But the masque and its allied theatrical forms do not appear to illuminate what is said in the dramatic passages of Milton's poem, nor is it realistically possible to delete the poet from the narrative or even the descriptive sections. Once again, we see how Milton integrates genres so skilfully that the result is a new form with its own unity. Everything he touches becomes his own, for as Coleridge observed, he 'attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal.' Current Trends in Zola Scholarship CHANTAL BERTRAND JENNINGS Emile Zola. Correspondanee.!: 1858- 1867. Edited byB.H. Bakker Montreal:Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal ! Paris: Editions du Centre national de la Recherche scientifique 1978. 594 Lewis Kamm. The Object in 2ola's Rougon-Maequart Madrid: Porua Turanzas, S.A., 5tudia Humanitatis 1978. 153 Neide de Faria. Structures et unitedans ies Rougon-Macquart Paris: Nizel1977- 310 Jacques Allard. 2ola, Ie chiffredu texte Sillery, Que:Les Presses de l'Universite du Quebec!Grenoble: Les Presses universitaires de Grenoble 1978. 164 Naomi Schor. 2ola's Crowds Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press 1978. xivl 221. $14.00 The great popularity Emile Zola is enjoying these days with the general public is reflected in the large number of very recent new editions in paperback collections, not only of his best-known novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, but also of some of his less famous early texts, his writings on art and literature, and his polemical articles. This renewed and vivid interest seems to be shared by scholars and critics alike, if one is to judge by the number of recent learned editions of Zola's writings and by the current abundance of critical studies on his fiction. The appearance in the sixties of the Pleiade edition of the Rougon-Macquart UNlVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 50, NUMBER}, SPRING 1981 0042-o247/81/0500-0}23$oo.00/0 \Q UNlVERSIn' OF TORONTO PRESS 324 CHANTAL BERTRAND JENNINGS started a new era of scholarship and criticism on Zola and his work which has resulted in the publication of the first volume of 2ola's Correspondance. This critical edition is undertaken with the collaboration of his descendants. When completed it will cover the years 1858- 1902, and will eventually include a mini~ mum of ten volumes, scheduled to appear approximately eighteen months apart. In contrast to the published correspondence of many other great writers, this edition is not one man's work, but proceeds from a collective and international endeavour. Two teams of scholars, one based in Canada at the University of Toronto, and the other at the Universities of Paris and Limoges in France, co-operated fruitfully to collect and edit these letters under the directorship of Bard Bakker as editor, Colette Becker as associate editor, and Henri Mitterand as literary adviser. The sum total of Zola's previously published letters amounts to 1200, while the editors of this Correspondance intend to produce a total of approximately 4000. Thus it will be as complete as is now possible. However, it is not a correspondance generale. One can regret the fact that time and financial limitations made it impossible to publish alongside 201a's own letters those of his many correspondents (amounting to between ten and twelve thousand), and one can only speculate on the truly exceptional document this would have constituted for the knowledge of the whole second part of the nineteenth century. To remedy this situation the editors have none the less included summaries and/or extracts of the correspondents' letters, thus making Zola's own more...