Naturalism / Realism

Realism - historical context

Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that does not idealize people or places

Realism - Content

• common characters not idealized

• faithful representation of reality

• emphasizes moralism through observation

Realism - style

• objective narrator

• character more important than action or plot

• diction is natural vernacular

• does not tell the reader how to interpret the story

• novels and short stories 

Realism - effect

• social realism: aims to change a specific social problem

• aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it

Naturalism - context

• Darwin -- survival of the fittest

• Karl Marx -- how money and class structure control a nation

Naturalism - content

• dominant themes: survival, fate, violence, taboo

• nature is an indifferent force acting on humans

• each individual has a "brute within”

• scientific principles of objectivity and detachment

Naturalism - style

• novels and short stories

• characters usually lower class or lower middle class

• fictional world is commonplace and unheroic

• characters ultimately emerge to act heroically or adventurously with acts of violence, passion, and/or bodily strength

• ending often tragic

Naturalism - effect

• This type of literature continues to capture audiences in present day (the pitting of man against nature)

Romanticism vs Naturalism

ROMANTICISM

• Emphasizes the search for and presentation of unknowable truth 

• Emphasizes the ideal 

  • Characters: unheroic/evil and larger than life—ideal types

  • Environments: can be supernatural and/or ambiguously "unreal" 

  • Language: tends towards the formal and/or poetic

• Relationship to reality: like a lamp

NATURALISM

• Emphasizes that the things that matter are unavoidable truths 

• Emphasizes the real 

  • Characters: average, common people—complex, flawed, and imperfect

  • Environments: natural and ordinary

  • Language: realistic dialects and common speech

• Relationship to reality: like a mirror 

Romanticism vs Realism

ROMANTICISM

• Emphasizes the human capacity for free will and the importance of enacting that will

REALISM

• Influenced by deterministic philosophy, tending to see humans as instinctual creatures

• More scientifically inclined--belief in absolutely precise details and research for storytelling