Tekst- og litteraturhistorie i de engelsksprogede lande Session Four: American Naturalism

Informationsmøde om BA- tilvalgsfag: Tirsdag den 21. okt KS5 lok. 43/45

Agenda Writing America American Naturalism Steven Crane Øvelsesopgave

Writing America Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" Jack London, "The Law of Life”

Writing America Nationalism: USA vs Europe Regionalism: city vs country Realism and Naturalism: individual vs society, man vs nature

Man, Nature, Society Darwinism: Nature is a struggle in which the fittest survives Social Darwinism: Society is competitive Zola: ”The Experimental Novel”

Émile Zola, ”The Experimental Novel” In short, we must operate with characters, pasions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies. Determinism governs everything. It is scientific investigation; it is experimental reasoning that combats one by one the hypotheses of the idealists and will replace novels of pure imagination by novels of observations and experiment

Kinds of Novelists The novelist as: Sociologist – outlines the way things (really) are Idealist – the way things ought to be (but really aren’t) Creator, inventor of new worlds – the way things could be, if only… Critic, satirist of his age – critiques the way thing are

American Naturalism A number of American writers adopted aspects of this pessimistic form of realism, this so-called naturalistic view of humankind, though each writer incorporated such naturalism into his or her work in individual ways, to different degrees, and combined with other perspectives. (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. C, ”Introduction”)

American Naturalism: Steven Crane How does Crane adopt the ”naturalistic view of humankind”? With which ”other perspectives” does Crane combine Naturalism? How? Setting, characters, plot, imagery, point of view

Øvelsesopgave