Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Wien. French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol. 9 General Editors: Malcolm Cook and James Kearns. This innovative study of Emile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart cycle reads Zola's novels as a history of capitalism. Drawing on critical methods from history, politics and literary theory, the author seeks to establish new connections between the work of Zola and that of Marx, Weber and Durkheim and to situate Zola's ideas in contemporary debates on capitalism. Contents: Introduction: reading Zola - Modernity - Capitalism - Imperialism - Secularization - Resistance - History - Possibilities - Appendix A: Zola and Wittgenstein - Appendix B: Reading capitalism - Bibliography - Index.