Naturalism
Nov. 25th, 2004 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
odd_buttons" [Naturalists] took the novel out of the drawing rooms and the bedrooms, away from the generals in their tents to the soldiers in the ditches, to city slums, coal mines, brothers, lifeboats -- wherever life was elemental. That was where you could study unvarnished human behavior.."
Oh, like Thanksgiving dinner tables across the United States? Goodness knows how competition over that last piece of pie can rip the veneer of civilized behavior off the nicest people . . . Hee!
I am a lucky person, and I am grateful for the many wonderful things in my life. I wish everyone a happy day.
Naturalism
The writers oft eh naturalist movement in fiction believed that the true nature of men and women was revealed by stripping away the veneer of artificial social structures. Starting in the late nineteenth century, works like Émilie Zola's Germinal, Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Frank Norris's McTeague, and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie took the novel out of the drawing rooms and the bedrooms, away from the generals in their tents to the soldiers in the ditches, to city slums, coal mines, brothers, lifeboats -- wherever life was elemental. That was where you could study unvarnished human behavior.
The naturalists freed fiction from the prison of middle-class gentility. They established that poverty, brutality, and violence were valid and necessary subjects for serious fiction. The lives of opium addicts were as significant as the lives of princes. You inherit that freedom.
The achievements of naturalism teach valuable lessons. These writers stressed the value of firsthand experience like Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who realized that to write authentically they had to immerse themselves in the subjects. Naturalists knew that for their fiction to transcend mere sociology they had to create memorable characters, as in Zola's Nana or James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan They understood that psychological or economic forces would remain abstractions unless they created gripping stories, as in Crane's The Red Badge of Courage or Dreiser's An American Tragedy
Naturalism established the precedent and the rationale for delving into the darker aspects of human existence. The suffering and the individuality of those who live on the margins of society were recognized. The naturalists' underlying philosophical principles were a strange mixture of Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, but they were storytellers first, creating some of the most vivid scenes and characters in American literature.
See Narrative, Profanity/Obscenity, Realism, Sex, Trust Your Material, "Write What You Know."
Oh, like Thanksgiving dinner tables across the United States? Goodness knows how competition over that last piece of pie can rip the veneer of civilized behavior off the nicest people . . . Hee!
I am a lucky person, and I am grateful for the many wonderful things in my life. I wish everyone a happy day.
Naturalism
The writers oft eh naturalist movement in fiction believed that the true nature of men and women was revealed by stripping away the veneer of artificial social structures. Starting in the late nineteenth century, works like Émilie Zola's Germinal, Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Frank Norris's McTeague, and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie took the novel out of the drawing rooms and the bedrooms, away from the generals in their tents to the soldiers in the ditches, to city slums, coal mines, brothers, lifeboats -- wherever life was elemental. That was where you could study unvarnished human behavior.
The naturalists freed fiction from the prison of middle-class gentility. They established that poverty, brutality, and violence were valid and necessary subjects for serious fiction. The lives of opium addicts were as significant as the lives of princes. You inherit that freedom.
The achievements of naturalism teach valuable lessons. These writers stressed the value of firsthand experience like Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who realized that to write authentically they had to immerse themselves in the subjects. Naturalists knew that for their fiction to transcend mere sociology they had to create memorable characters, as in Zola's Nana or James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan They understood that psychological or economic forces would remain abstractions unless they created gripping stories, as in Crane's The Red Badge of Courage or Dreiser's An American Tragedy
Naturalism established the precedent and the rationale for delving into the darker aspects of human existence. The suffering and the individuality of those who live on the margins of society were recognized. The naturalists' underlying philosophical principles were a strange mixture of Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, but they were storytellers first, creating some of the most vivid scenes and characters in American literature.
See Narrative, Profanity/Obscenity, Realism, Sex, Trust Your Material, "Write What You Know."