Rob Edwards
Émile Zola: “The Experimental Novel” (page 172)
Émile Zola was one of France's greatest novelists
He was unemployed for two years, and learned how much the poor really suffered
Once he became a prominent writer, his descriptions of the Paris slums made him famous as a social critic
The social conditions of france unceasingly modify the horrible physical conditions in which the poor people live
Social conditions also completely affect the machinery of each man: how he thinks, how he loves, etc.
“The metaphysical man is dead; our whole territory is transformed by the advent of the physiological man.”
The experimental method in letters, as in the sciences, is on the way to explain the natural phenomena, both individual and social, of which metaphysics, until now, has given only irrational and supernatural explanations.
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