Doctor Pascal

Émile Zola's Doctor Pascal (1893), the final installment in his monumental twenty-novel cycle Les Rougon-Macquart, serves as both a summation and a theoretical culmination of the entire series. Set in Plassans, the narrative centers on the character of Dr. Pascal Rougon, an aged physician and scientist devoted to studying heredity. Through this protagonist, Zola not only synthesizes the biological, psychological, and sociopolitical threads developed across the Rougon-Macquart novels, but al...