THE NATURALISM
Naturalism can refer to the technique of portraying life in a scientifically
detached manner, however, it is generally used to refer specifically to a
nineteenth century movement in art and literature where the authors (or artists)
claimed to be objective observers. In fact, naturalist writers were strongly
influenced by evolutionary theory, and saw human beings as creatures
constrained by heredity and environment, rather than as beings with free will.
So,
the term “NATURALISM” describes a type of literature that
applies scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to
its study of human beings. The term was invented by Émile
Zola partly because he was seeking for a striking platform from which to
convince the reading public that it was getting something new and modern in his
fiction. For naturalistic writers, since human beings are,
according to a Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts,"
characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings.
A term used by Emile Zola to describe the application of
the clinical method of empirical science to all of life. According to naturalistic
philosophy, heredity and environment influence and determine human
motivation and behaviour. Thus, if a writer wishes to depict life as it really
is, he or she must be rigorously deterministic in the representation of the
characters' thoughts and actions in order to show forth the causal factors that
have made the characters inevitably what they are.
Naturalism specifically connects itself to the philosophical doctrine of
biological and social determinism, according to which human beings are devoid
of free will.
The
description of this method in The
Experimental Novel (1880)
follows the Claude Bernard's medical model and the historian Hippolyte
Taine's observation in which human beings as "products"
should be studied impartially, without moralizing about their
natures. It’s a scientific method, an objective study of human beings where
naturalistic writers study human beings governed by their instincts and
passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives are governed by
forces of heredity and environment.
Another definition appears in “American Realism: New Essays”. In
that piece, "The Country of the Blue", Eric
Sundquist comments: "... naturalism dramatizes the loss of
individuality at a physiological level by making a Calvinism without God its
determining order and violent death its utopia".
The characters are frequently ill-educated or
lower-class whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct,
and passion and the naturalist novel is frequently in an urban setting.
Concerning to the techniques and plots, Walcutt
says that the naturalistic novel offers "clinical, panoramic,
slice-of-life" drama that is often a "chronicle of despair".
Walcutt identifies survival, determinism, violence, and taboo as key themes.
In “Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction”
(1984), (pag.12) Donald Pizer's say to us that the
naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions that
constitute its theme and its form:
-The
first: The naturalist discovers, in a fictional world, heroic or adventurous
qualities of man, such as acts of violence and passion which involve sexual
adventure and which culminate in desperate moments and violent death.
-The second: The theme.
The characters are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct,
or chance. The tension here is that between the
naturalist's desire to represent in fiction the new discomfiting truths which
the writer has found in the ideas and life of his late nineteenth-century
world, and also his desire to find some meaning in experience which reasserts
the validity of the human enterprise. (10-11)
Richard Chase argues that American naturalism is realism
with a “necessitarian ideology” and George J. Becker considers it
as “no more than an emphatic and explicit philosophical position taken by some
realists”(11-12)
On the other hand, we find the works of Frank
Norris( “Mc Teague” 1899), Theodore Dreiser ( “Sister
Carrie” 1900) and Stephen Crane ( “The red badge of
courage” 1895), considered, by Donald Pizer, (pags11-36)the three leading late nineteenth-century American
naturalists.
According to F. Norris, naturalism abstracts the best from
realism and romanticism, detailed accuracy and philosophical depth. Norris’s
theme is the man’s racial atavism and man’s individual family heritage that
can combine as a force toward a return to the emotions and instincts of man’s
animal past.(pag.16)
T. Dreiser (pag.19)say to us that we cannot escape the
impact of physical reality and that this fact is one of the few that man may
know with certainty. He, in the same way like F. Norris, combines the
sensational and the commonplace.
Finally, S. Crane (pag.26) appears saying that all life is
a constant sea of violence in which we inevitably immerse ourselves and in
which we test our beliefs and our values.
For Donald Pizer the naturalists do not dehumanize man,
but they suggest new or modified areas of value in him.
-Campbell, Donna M. Naturalism in American
Literature." Literary Movements”.
<http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/natural.htm>.
-Zola, Emile: “El naturalismo/ Emile Zola;
selección, introducción y notas de Laureano Bonet”.
-http://teenwriting.about.com/library/glossary/bldef-naturalism.htm
-Donald Pizer's “Realism and Naturalism in
Nineteenth-Century American Fiction” (1984)
-Eric Sundqui: “American Realism: New Essays”
-Ahnebrink, Lars: “The beginnings of Naturalism
in American fiction 1891-1903”. New
York/ Russell and Russell.