Realism and Naturalism

Background Nineteenth century – greatest changes in the history of Western civilization. Growth of nationalism. Middle class establishes effective rule. Great Britain rules the seas – imperialism. Political changes caused social changes Industrial revolution Transformation of living conditions.

Background Liberty: liberation from the rule of the foreigner. emancipation of the serfs and slaves. removal of economic restrictions. introduction of a constitution. free speech. parliamentary institutions.

Background Rapid urbanization. New labor class. Change in human life in most countries. Unprecedented increase in population fostered by advances in medicine and hygiene. Decline of the social and political power of the aristocracy. Shift in prevailing outlooks and philosophies.

Background Scientific outlook spread widely and permeated all fields of human thought. Liberty, science, progress, evolution – main concepts of the 19th century. Clash between the middle class and the proletariat. Development of scientific socialism.

Background Decreased influence of religion on intellectuals and ordinary people. religion incompatible with the scientific method: discoveries of astronomy, archeology, biology. Religion confined to an inner feeling of religiosity, a system of morality. Literature expressed the social and intellectual situation of the time.

Realism 1840’s end of Romanticism in literature. Realism and Naturalism are both responses to Romanticism Period of great realistic writers: Flaubert in France, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russia, Dickens in England, Henry James in America.

Realism Truthful representation of reality, contemporary life and manners. Objective, observational methods. Personality of the author should be suppressed. Reality seen as it is. Zola: the procedure of the novelist is identical with that of the experimenting scientist. Anti-romantic. Systematic description of contemporary society.

Realism Heroes drawn from middle and lower classes. Explicit criticism of society – social and political issues at forefront of people’s concerns. All-inclusiveness of subject matter. Themes that were considered “low”, “sordid”, “trivial”, disgusting. Chekhov: “To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line: he must know that dung heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.”

Realism The subject is treated objectively, without interference and falsification by the artist’s personality and his own desires. Condemnation of the fantastic, historical, remote, idealized, idyllic. Realism professes to present us with a “slice of life.” Recognizable people and places. Details drawn from everyday life. Plain, normal, everyday people dealing with normal, everyday life. 

Realism Make use of specific dialects, or speech patterns that are particular to certain locales. Attention on the immediate, the here and now. In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century.

Naturalism Naturalism is an outgrowth of realism. Individual human beings are at the mercy of uncontrollable larger forces that originate both inside and outside them.  These forces might include some of our more "animal" drives, such as the need for food, sex, shelter, social dominance, etc. Importance of heredity and environment in determining character.

Naturalism History shapes protagonists rather than being shaped by them. The formula is a classic one: assemble a varied group of representative characters together in some institution or space and subject them to a catastrophe and watch how they individually cope with it.