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20th century, naturalism left an ongoing impact, as many modern
writers incorporate naturalist features into their work.
The History of Naturalism
Jules-Antoine Castagnary,
a French art critic, first used the
term
naturalism
to describe a style of lifelike painting that became
popular in the early 1860s. Émile Zola then applied the term to
literature. Zola‟s seminal essay “The Experimental Novel,”
published
in 1880, presents a detailed examination of the novel as a preeminent
naturalistic literary art form.
Zola laid out three main arguments in the essay. First, writers could
incorporate French physiologist Claude Bernard‟s method of scientific
inquiry to their works. Bernard stated that controlled experiments could
either prove or disprove a hypothesis regarding the tested phenomena.
Zola posited that a writer could use this same approach, with the
characters functioning as the phenomena. Second, Zola said this
experimental
method
separates
naturalism
from
realism
and romanticism. Finally, Zola presented
an argument challenging his
critics‟ assertions that his work was immoral and offensive.
Zola‟s 20-novel series
Les Rougon-Macquart
, written between 1871
and 1893, is one of the most significant contributions to naturalist
literature. It centers on the lives of two fictional French families—one
privileged, the other destitute—throughout five generations.
Environment, heredity, and the challenges of life in the Second French
Empire ultimately lead each family to ruin.
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American author Frank Norris was another formative figure in the
naturalism movement.
Like Zola, he viewed his characters as
experiments; he exposed them to certain stimuli or phenomena and
recorded their reactions. The result blends literature and science,
marrying a writer‟s gift for character and description with a scientist‟s
detached observations on proven or disproven hypotheses. Stephen
Crane,
the author of
The Red Badge of Courage
and other works,
employed a similar approach and contributed greatly to the canon of
American naturalism.
Naturalism as its own distinct literary movement largely ended around
1900, when American magazine
The Outlook
published
a tongue-in-
cheek obituary for naturalism. The publication went so far as to deem
Zola‟s efforts to craft a new form of scientific literature a total failure.
This stance is debatable, especially because countless writers since
1900 have infused their works with heavily naturalistic elements.
Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and
Jack London are just a few
who carried naturalism into the 20th century.
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