naturalism

NAME:

Naturalism

ALTERNATIVE NAME:

None

LANGUAGE:

Predominantly French

TIME:

Late 19th c

LOCATION:

Predominantly France

CATEGORY:

A school of thought

DISCIPLINE:

The Arts

ASSOCIATION:

French literature and art

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

A movement which followed on from realism in the arts, adding to the realists' emphasis on portraying modern life a belief in the determinism that results from heredity and the constraints of environment.

DESCRIPTION: At the end of the nineteenth century, a school of thought known as ‘naturalism’ developed first in literature and the visual arts, and then drama. The movement originated in France, which remained the bastion of naturalism. Its influence extended to other European countries,  most  particularly  Germany, and - later - to America.

Its philosophical background reached back to the ancient Greek philosophers who used the term to denote any secular thinking, such as materialism. In the eighteenth century,  the English philosopher <prefigured by> Locke* stated that man lived in a world where no transcendental or divine forces operated and where the only truth came through experience of the real, natural world.  

In the nineteenth century, the French philosopher <prefigured by> Comte* wrote that humans progressed from mystical thinking as in theology, to metaphysical or abstract modes of thought and then to positive or scientific thought where it is accepted that we only know what we can see or deduce from observation.

For these philosophers, then, naturalism was the opposite of supernaturalism. Above all, it was the progress made in the development of the natural sciences in the early nineteenth century which laid the foundations for naturalism in the arts.

In France, the work of <prefigured by> Cuvier* and <prefigured by> Lamarck* meant that nature, which had been idealised by the Romantics at the end of the eighteenth century, was now associated with serious scientific research. 

In 1859, <influenced by> Charles Darwin*'s "Origin of the Species by means of Natural Selection" was published. It was translated into French in 1860 and into German in 1862 and the theory of evolution became the biggest debating point of the times. The naturalists' idea of man was directly related to their interpretation of Darwin: that the course of an individual's life was dictated by their physiological inheritance and the environment in which they lived.

In the 1860's, the French literary critic <exponent was> Taine* related Darwin's theories to the literature of French realists who wrote about contemporary everyday life. He  praised the novelists  <exponent was> Balzac* and <exponent was> Stendhal* as  anatomists who dissected  human beings to show how they were affected by their situation in life and the pressures of their environment.

It was the idea that life was determined which separated naturalism from realism.  Realists believed in the importance of viewing man and the natural world absolutely truthfully, without embellishment or reference to a religious or mythological context. Naturalists took this a step further by emphasising man's animal inheritance and basic instincts and discounting the human attributes of rationality and morality which might also affect the course of an individual's life.

Although the Goncourt brothers wrote the first "scientific" novel with their history of a servant girl "Germinie Lacerteux" in 1864, the French writer <leader was> Zola* was the acknowledged leader of naturalism. He had read Taine and also <influenced by> Bernard*'s "Introduction to the Scientific Study of Medicine"1865, in which he said that doctors should use only observation and deduction, not intuition, when studying their patients.

Zola commented that this was the method novelists should use for presenting their characters and declared that metaphysical man was being replaced by physiological man.  In his series of novels "Les Rougon-Macquart" he portrayed different members of the same family, showing the ways in which their lives were determined by the genes they had inherited and by the different environments in which they lived and worked.  Zola wrote about contemporary life and about human nature in relation to  the changes and pressures brought about by the industrial revolution.

In the interests of the scientific observation which was part of naturalism, he went down a mine to research his novel "Germinal"; measured the dimensions of a prostitute's room for "Nana" and went - quaking - on a railway engine for "La Bete Humaine".

A group of writers who included <exponent was> Maupassant* met at Zola's home and pursued their campaign against what Maupassant called "the Romantics' snivelling sentimentality".

Naturalism in drama also developed from realism, and independent experimental theatres were opened so that plays dealing with contemporary subjects could be staged and produced in a naturalist way.

In Paris, the Theatre Libre (Free Theatre) was founded in 1887; the Freie Buhne (Free Stage) was opened in Berlin in 1889 and the Independent Theatre in London in 1891. Among the most celebrated naturalist plays of the time are <exponent was> Ibsen*'s "Ghosts" 1881 in which the hereditary theme is starkly portrayed through congenital syphilis; <exponent was> Tolstoy*'s  "The Power of Darkness"1886, which was banned in Russia and put on in Paris with Zola's backing;  and <exponent was> Strindberg*'s "Miss Julie" 1888 Zola also published a series of reviews on contemporary art in France in which he championed the controversial naturalist development in the visual arts.

Artists of the Realist school such as <exponent was> Courbet*  had discarded the neo-classical tradition of  French art and instead painted modern subjects with no reference to history or mythology. The Impressionists carried on from realist aims by introducing brilliant colours, outdoor painting, and  experimental techniques in order to paint nature as they physically experienced it. In his reviews, Zola used the words naturalist, impressionist and realist interchangeably.

In England, there was no formal movement involving  groups of writers or expositions of naturalism. There was already a strong, well-accepted  tradition of realism, as seen in novelists such as <related to> Dickens*, <related to> Thackeray* and <related to> George Eliot*.

The emphasis naturalists put on writing about the lower sections of society and portraying unpleasant social truths did not therefore have such a shocking impact as it did in France. It could be said that there was no need of naturalism in England. George Gissing's "The Nether World" 1889 is the most prominent example of an English naturalist novel.  

In Germany the movement was intense, diffuse and short lived.  Naturalism was most prominent in the literary journals of the time and in the books on literary theory which were published.   <exponent was> Mann's* novel, "Buddenbrooks" written in 1901 was a naturalist novel which, unusually, examined the prosperous middle classes. On the whole, there was more theorizing and debate about naturalism than there was naturalistic writing in Germany and the many theories of naturalism  had little in common.

In America, a succession of naturalist writers were influenced more by the consequences of industrialisation and capitalism than by Darwin and Comte.  In the mid 1880's, for example, the writer Stephen Crane. Later, John Steinbeck "Tortilla Flat" (1935) and  "Grapes of Wrath" (1939). 

ONELINER: Naturalism, a post-Romantic school of thought in literature and the arts

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Furst, Lilian R and Skrine, Peter N,  Naturalism, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London,

1971