Naturalism is aliterary movement beginning in the latenineteenth century, similar toliterary realism in its rejection ofRomanticism, but distinct in its embrace ofdeterminism, detachment,scientific objectivism, andsocial commentary. Literary naturalism emphasizes observation and thescientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality. Naturalism includes detachment, in which the narrator maintains an impersonal tone and disinterested point of view; determinism, which is defined as the opposite offree will, in which a character's fate has been decided, evenpredetermined, by impersonal forces of nature beyond human control; and a sense that the universe itself is indifferent to human life. The novel would be an experiment where the author could discover and analyze the forces, or scientific laws, that influenced behavior, and these included emotion, heredity, and environment. The movement largely traces to the theories of French authorÉmile Zola.[1]
Literary Naturalism traces back most directly[2][3] toÉmile Zola's "The Experimental Novel" (1880), which details Zola's concept of a naturalistic novel,[4] which traces philosophically toAuguste Comte'spositivism,[2] but also to physiologistClaude Bernard and historianHippolyte Taine.[1][4] Comte had proposed a scientific method that "went beyond empiricism, beyond the passive and detached observation of phenomena". The application of this method "called for a scientist to conduct controlled experiments that would either prove or disprove hypotheses regarding those phenomena". Zola took this scientific method and argued that naturalism in literature should be like controlled experiments in which the characters function as the phenomena.[5]
Naturalism began as a branch ofliterary realism, and realism had favored fact, logic, and impersonality over the imaginative, symbolic, and supernatural.Frank Norris, an American journalist and novelist, whose work was predominantly in the naturalist genre, "placed realism, romanticism, and naturalism in a dialectic, in which realism and romanticism were opposing forces", and naturalism was a mixture of the two. Norris's idea of naturalism differs from Zola's in that "it does not mention materialistic determinism or any other philosophic idea".[6]
Excerpt from the naturalistic book "Le sou du mutilé". Written byCyriel Buysse in the beginning of the 20th century.[7]
Apart from Zola and Norris, there are various literary critics who have their own separate views on the matter. As said byPaul Civello, these critics can be grouped into four broad, and often overlapping, groups: early theorists, history-of-idea critics, European influence critics, and recent theorists. The early theorists saw naturalism thematically and in terms of literary technique. The history-of-idea critics understood it as an expression of the central ideas to an era. The European influence critics viewed it in much the same way as Zola. For example, according to theoristKornelije Kvas, naturalism presents "forms of human experience not spoken of before – the physiological aspect of human behavior, sexuality, poverty – as literary topics worthy of being dealt with."[8] Recent theorists have either re-conceptualized naturalism as a narrative form, or denied its existence entirely.[5]
Some[who?] say that naturalism is dead, or that it "may have never lived at all: even in the works of Émile Zola", its founder. "In 1900 an obituary entitled "The Passing of Naturalism" inThe Outlook officially declared the literary movement deceased", and that Zola's attempt to create a scientific literature was a failure.[9] This certainly was not the first time Zola's novel had been criticized however. After his novelThérèse Raquin (1867) had been sharply criticized for both contents and language, in a foreword for its second edition (1868), in a mixture of pride and defiance, he wrote: "Le groupe d'écrivains naturalistes auquel j'ai l'honneur d'appartenir a assez de courage et d'activité pour produire des oeuvres fortes, portant en elles leur défense",[10] which translates as: "The group of naturalist writers I have the honor to belong to have enough courage and activity to produce strong works, carrying within them their defense."
Naturalism in American literature traces toFrank Norris, whose theories were markedly different from Zola's, particularly to the status of naturalism within the loci of realism and Romanticism; Norris thought of naturalism as being Romantic, and thought Zola as being "a realist of realists".[3] To Link, while American naturalism had trends, its definition had no unified critical consensus.[3] Link's examples includeStephen Crane,Jack London,Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris, withWilliam Dean Howells andHenry James being clear markers on the other side of the naturalist/realist divide.
The center of Crane's naturalism is recognized as "The Open Boat," which portrayed a naturalistic view of man with his depiction of a group of survivors adrift in a boat. The humans with their creation confronted the sea and the world of nature. In the experiences of these men, Crane articulated the illusion of gods and the realization of the universe's indifference.[11]
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," a story about a woman who killed her lover, is considered an example of a narrative within the naturalism category. This story, which also usedGothic elements, presented a tale that highlighted the extraordinary and excessive features in human nature and the social environment that influences them.[12] The protagonist, Miss Emily, was forced to lead an isolated life, and that – combined with her mental illness – made insanity her inevitable fate. The environment in the forms of a class structure based on slavery[13] and social change,[14] together withheredity, represented the forces beyond her control.
^abFowler Brown, Donald (1957). "Zola, Master of Naturalism".The Catholic Naturalism of Pardo Bazán. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 1–29.
^abcLink, Eric Carl (2011). "Defining American Literary Naturalism". In Newlin, Keith (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism. Oxford University Press. pp. 71–91.ISBN9780195368932.
^abCivello, Paul (1994),American Literary Naturalism and its Twentieth-Century Transformations: Frank Norris, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo, The University of Georgia Press, pp. 1–2,23–24.
^Pizer, Donald (1993),The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism: Selected Essays and Reviews, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 120–122.
^Kvas, Kornelije (2019).The Boundaries of Realism in World Literature. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books. p. 7.ISBN978-1-7936-0910-6.
^Link, Eric Carl (2004), "Preface",The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century, The University of Alabama Press, p. iv.
^Zola, Émile,Thérèse Raquin(PDF), La Bibliotheque electronique du Quebec, p. 14
^Conder, John (1984).Naturalism in American Fiction: The Classic Phase. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. p. 22.ISBN9780813151762.
^Williams, Tony (2015).The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead. London: Wallflower Press. p. 92.ISBN9780231173544.
^Hughes, William; Punter, David; Smith, Andrew (2015).The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, 2 Volume Set. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. p. 19.ISBN9781405182904.
^Skinner, John L. (1985). ""A Rose for Emily": Against Interpretation".The Journal of Narrative Technique.15 (1):42–51.JSTOR30225110.
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