Écrire après Balzac L’arbre des Rougon-Macquart

La Fortune des Rougon cannot be approached without the perspective of the whole Rougon-Macquart cycle. Zola based the logic of his novelistic project on Balzac’s example while simultaneously trying to define his own originality. Two fundamental principles lie at the heart of his enterprise: the perspective of the rectilinear trajectory offered by the genealogical tree, and the framework of a series with multiple entry points, the progression of which sought to meet the objective of twenty novels.