Naturalism (literary)

Naturalism is the term for a movement in visual arts and literature in the late 19th and early 20th century. Literary naturalism was an effort to weld natural science views of nature, in particular a distinct reading of Darwinian evolution to existing realism. Literary realism from which naturalism arose involved efforts to construct narrative “slices of life” or pure, unadulterated representations of reality offered seemingly without moral judgment on the part of the author.

Authors working from naturalistic perspectives sought to add to the fidelity of realistic accounts various degrees of scientific determinism emphasizing both physiology and chance as alternatives to moralistic or rationalistic causation. Although realistic authors often portray their characters as products of their environment, naturalistic accounts tended more toward portrayals of individuals as clueless products of their heredity and environment with little responsibility for their circumstances or fates. The earliest signs of literary naturalism are found in 19th century France in the critical theorizing of Hippolyte Taine (1863-64, History of English Literature) and the “scientific” novel of the Goncourt brothers, Germinie Lacerteux (1864). The best known French advocate of literary naturalism was Émile Zola, whose essay The Experimental Novel(Le Roman expérimental), published in 1880, became the literary manifesto of naturalism.

In the U.S., Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Frank Norris and Jack London (e.g., The Call of the Wild) are all considered literary naturalists, as is the work of Theodore Dreiser. James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-1935) may be the latest expression of the original naturalistic approach.