美国文学Lecture 10.pptVIP

Naturalism is sometimes claimed to give an even more accurate depiction of life than realism; is a mode of fiction that was developed by a school of writers in accordance with a particular philosophical thesis, which held that a human being exists entirely in the order of nature and does not have a soul nor any mode of participating in a religious or spiritual world beyond the natural world; and therefore, that such a being is merely a higher-order animal whose character and behavior are entirely determined by two kinds of forces, heredity and environment. Naturalism A person inherits compulsive instincts – especially hunger, the drive to accumulate possessions, and sexuality – and is then subject to the social and economic forces in the family, the class, and the milieu into which that person is born. The French novelist émile Zola (1840–1902) is the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism.naturalism. Naturalism Naturalism Zola and later naturalistic writers, such as the Americans Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser, try to present their subjects with scientific objectivity and with elaborate documentation (material that serves as a record), sometimes including an almost medical frankness about activities and bodily functions usually unmentioned in earlier literature. Naturalism They tend to choose characters who exhibit strong animal drives such as greed and sexual desire, and who are helpless victims both of glandular secretions within and of sociological pressures without. The end of the naturalistic novel is usually “tragic”, but not, as in classical and Elizabethan tragedy, because of a heroic but losing struggle of the individual mind and will against gods, enemies, and circumstances. Instead the protagonist of the naturalistic plot, a pawn to multiple compulsions, usually disintegrates, or is wiped out. Frank Norris (1870-1902) McTeague (1899) “Epic of the Wheat,” The Octopus (1901) , The Pit (1903) , Th