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Naturalism: Emile Zola
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Naturalism was a movement in literature, which developed out of Realism. Emile Zola was the founder of the school. Other writers were: Guy de Maupassant, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrel, Henrik Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Maxim Gorky.
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Naturalism's most important theorist, Émile Zola, was perhaps its leading practitioner. His preface to the second edition of Thérèse Raquin (1868) defines naturalism, while his "The Experimental Novel" (1880) elaborates on its method. Zola urges novelists to work like scientists, placing characters in controlled environments and studying temperaments rather than individualized characters. This strategy results in a narrative posture of detached objectivity and clinical observation. Zola exemplified these qualities in his twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart series, illustrating the effects of heredity and environment on several generations.
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The name Naturalism suggests the philosophy of science, and the connection is genuine. Zola thought that in his great series of novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, he was studying the “natural and social history” of a family during the time of Napoleon III.
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Emile Zola