Zola and the Art of Television: Adaptation, Recreation, Translation

Émile Zola (1840-1902) has become one of the most adapted authors of all time, but while much has been made of his adaptation into cinema and theater, television has largely been overlooked. Yet television, with its serial structures and popular reach, is uniquely suited to the adaptation of a novelist who eagerly reworked his writing for the broadest audiences possible. It is not for nothing that broadcasters such as the BBC return to Zola so often – most recently with The Paradise (2012). In older productions, particularly, sweeping panoramas disappear, to be replaced by the boxy interior shots of studio-produced pieces heavy with dialogue. But television fulfils Zola's intention to provide, in close-up, a dissection of the characters’ entrapment as they struggle beneath the weight of their heredity, era and environment.
The passage from book to television is also the passage from a single author to a collective one, in a process which challenges many of the simple binaries which have limited traditional theories of adaptation. Different identities commission, fund, write, direct and produce programs which are then shown and re-shown in different contexts, forms, times and media packages. Zola's many television appearances ask us to reconsider the boundaries of authorship, adaptation and the artistic artifact.
Kate Griffiths is a Senior Lecturer in French and Translation Studies at Cardiff University.