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    A Study Guide for "Naturalism"
    A Study Guide for "Naturalism"
    A Study Guide for "Naturalism"
    Ebook38 pages25 minutes

    A Study Guide for "Naturalism"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for "Naturalism," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Movements for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Movements for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535829373
    A Study Guide for "Naturalism"

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      A Study Guide for "Naturalism" - Gale

      09

      Naturalism

      c. 1860

      Movement Origin

      Naturalism applies scientific ideas and principles, such as instinct and Darwin's theory of evolution, to fiction. Authors in this movement wrote stories in which the characters behave in accordance with the impulses and drives of animals in nature. The tone is generally objective and distant, like that of a botanist or biologist taking notes or preparing a treatise. Naturalist writers believe that truth is found in natural law, and because nature operates according to consistent principles, patterns, and laws, truth is consistent.

      Because the focus of Naturalism is human nature, stories in this movement are character-driven rather than plot-driven. Although Naturalism was inspired by the work of the French writer Émile Zola, it reached the peak of its accomplishment in the United States. In France, Naturalism was most popular in the late 1870s and early 1880s, but it emerged in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and remained in vogue up to World War I.

      The fundamental naturalist doctrine is presented in Zola's 1880 essay Le roman experimental (meaning the experimental—or experiential— novel). In it, Zola claims that the naturalist writers subject believable characters and events to experimental conditions. In other words, these writers take the known (such as a character) and introduce it into the unknown (such as an unfamiliar place). Another major principle of Naturalism that Zola explains in this essay is the idea of determinism, which is the theory that a person's fate is determined solely by factors and forces beyond an individual's personal control, such as heredity and environment.

      While the French initiated and developed Naturalism, Americans are credited with bringing it to its fullest expression. American Naturalist writers include the novelists Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Hamlin Garland, and Jack London; the short story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter); and the poets Edwin Arlington Robinson and Edgar Lee Masters. Dreiser's An American Tragedy is considered the pinnacle of naturalist achievement. Other representative works are

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