region
La Beauce
The vast wheat plain south of Paris, the setting of La Terre. Flat, fertile, and elemental — Zola's Beauce is the land itself as a force, indifferent to the human passions it witnesses. The peasantry's attachment to this soil, violent and almost geological, is the novel's subject.
La grande plaine céréalière au sud de Paris, décor de La Terre. La Beauce est une force élémentaire, indifférente aux passions humaines.