Messiah Or Antichrist?

This new study of Zola seeks to do justice to the strong religious thread that runs through the whole of Zola's work. Messiah or Antichrist? examines the factors that may have induced Zola to embrace the messianic vision and then systematically traces the rejection and eventual readopting of that myth in prose works that span a period of some forty years. This pioneering literary analysis is a new reading of Zola's major fictional writings, especially the best-selling RougonMacquart cycle, but it draws attention to the early and relatively unknown late novels as well.