Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature

Extract

The term naturalism refers to a late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literary movement whose practitioners used the techniques and theories of science to convey a truthful picture of life. The characteristics of naturalism include a carefully detailed presentation of modern society, often featuring lower-class characters in an urban setting or a panoramic view of a slice of contemporary life; a deterministic philosophy that emphasizes the effects of heredity and environment; characters who act from passion rather than reason and show little insight into their behavior; and plots of decline that show the characters’ descent as the inevitable result of the choices they have made. The critic George Becker once defined naturalism as “pessimistic materialistic determinism” (35), but its elements are more complex than that phrase would suggest. For example, David Baguley identifies naturalistic novels as those that treat sociological or scientific subjects, often to expose individual or cultural pathologies, through a combination of dysphoric plots of decline and minutely detailed settings; they also “undermine parodically the myths, plots, idealized situations, and heroic character types of the romantic and the institutionalized literature to which they are opposed” (21). In its frank presentation of violence and sexuality , naturalism broke free from earlier and more ... log in or subscribe to read full text