19th century literature was marked by realism, but Émile Zola made this movement more scientific - he wove natural science into literature and created the most radical movement of realism, naturalism. A few years after the scandalous experimental novel Thérèse Raquin, his magnum opus started being published: Rougon-Macquart, a cycle of twenty novels that tell the story of a family during the reign of Napoleon III. In my dissertation I will only focus on one part of this extensive family, the Mourets. By analyzing the novels in which the members of this family appear, I will try to show how they are genetically burdened and how determinism presents itself in them.
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