Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Dreyfus Affair: "J`Accuse" and Other Writings (1898)by Emile Zola
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  BrokenTune | Aug 21, 2016 |   Mark K. Jensen has done an admirable job in his translation and context-setting introduction. Someone interested in an overview of the Dreyfus Affair (like me) couldn't ask for more than this slim volume provides. (  ) LynnB | Mar 8, 2009 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesMille et une nuits (19)
In September 1894 the French authorities intercepted a letter which they claimed emanated from a Jewish army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, which they claimed to be proof of espionage on behalf of Germany. Dreyfus was subsequently court-martialed and imprisoned on Devil's Island, and the efforts of his family to have him released provoked an anti-Semitic controversy that split the French intellectual world down the center. Most famous among the participants was France's greatest living novelist, Emile Zola. This book is the first to provide, in English translation, the full extent of Zola's writings on the Dreyfus affair. It represents, in its polemical entirety, a classic defense of human rights and a searing denunciation of fanaticism and prejudice. The book opens with the complete text of "J'Accuse," Zola's public letter to the French authorities. It also includes impassioned "open letters" to leading French newspapers, interviews with Zola at his home, intimate letters to his wife and friends written during his year-long exile in England (a direct result of three trials and a prison sentence for his part in the defense of Dreyfus), and his final articles, written when Dreyfus was close to being pardoned. Zola's texts constitute a unique and outstandingly eloquent primary source that is essential for a complete understanding of the Dreyfus affair. They shed brilliant new light on the official mind of France and were crucial in reversing public opinion, securing a retrial, and ensuring Dreyfus's rehabilitation. The significance of Zola's cause--and his scathing and passionate prose--resonate from his time to ours. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)944.081History and Geography Europe France and region France Third republic 1870- Third Republic 1870-1945 ; XXth CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.99)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
3
http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/836526/j-accuse-
When it comes to French literature and history I am a little out of my depth. The reason for this, I suspect, is that I was put off French literature by the people who tried to introduce it to me. It's the old familiar story shared by people who say that they have been put off classics or science in high school, except that it was not school who spoiled French literature for me. It was a handful of pretentious people I briefly knew socially. There is an element of snobbishness to this story - probably on both sides.
There is no element of snobbishness in J'Accuse. Zola's letter is an elegant and eloquent expression of his intolerance towards an establishment who believes that blaming a scapegoat for the treason committed in its own ranks is acceptable. An establishment who believes that bullying and perverting the course of justice is a an acceptable course of action to preserve its role in society. It is by taking into account the deceit and power of this establishment, which through a web of lies condemned an innocent Alfred Dreyfus to a penal colony, that I am impressed by Zola. Not by his outrage against the establishment. I'm impressed by the risk he took to publicly denounce the wrong that was done against Dreyfus.
Of course, I am aware of Zola's personal legal battle that followed the publication of J'Accuse and the efforts of the Dreyfusards to appeal against Dreyfus' sentence, and it was somewhat humbling to read the text which is so seminal in the rift in French society that ensued from the arrogance of an establishment that seemed to have forgotten the principles of equality and liberty on which it was supposed to have been founded. (