Download or read book 'Germinal' and Zola's Philosophical and Religious Thought written by Philip Walker and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolize the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted "Germinal! Germinal!"While it is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, Germinal is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigor and power in this new translation. It is also the thirteenth book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, which celebrates its centenary in October 1993 with a new film.