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Naturalism
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Naturalism was first prominently exhibited in the writings of 19th-century French authors, especially Edmond Louis Antoine de Goncourt, his brother Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, and Émile Zola. The latter, inspired by his readings in history and medicine, attempted to apply methods of scientific observation to the depiction of pathological human character, notably in his series of novels devoted to several generations of one French family. His essay “The Experimental Novel” (1880; trans. 1893) explains his theory of literary naturalism.
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While the French initiated and began to develop Naturalism, Americans are credited with bringing it to fruition. American Naturalist writers include the novelists Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Hamlin Garland, and Jack London; the short story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter); and the poets Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edgar Lee Masters. Dreiser’s An American Tragedy is considered the pinnacle of naturalist achievement. Other representative works are Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, London’s The Call of the Wild, Norris’s McTeague, and Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.
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One of the first American exponents of Naturalism was Frank Norris, whose novel McTeague (1899) is a classic study of the interplay between instinctual drives and environmental conditions. Other notable writers of Naturalistic fiction were Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, and James T. Farrell.
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Definition: Naturalism is a theory in literature which emphasizes the role of environment upon human characters. It is an extreme form of realism which arose in the early 20th century. Rather than focusing on the internal qualities of their characters, authors called out the effects of heredity and environment, outside forces, on humanity.
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Naturalism is a writing style in which the author seeks to replicate reality. But, it is different than realism. It is the opposite of Romanticism in which objects can be highly symbolic. Naturalism seeks to define items and objects in a scientific way. These works can often include poverty, death, disease, racism, prejudice, and other dark harshnesses of life.
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Naturalism has a major "Achilles' Heel" - the origin of life. Life only comes from life. How do naturalists fit this into their cosmogony? They must find a mechanism by which life could evolve from inorganic matter. Life is incredibly complex. Could this level of complexity arrive naturally by chance chemical interactions over time?
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