Realism and Naturalism

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Realism and Naturalism

• second half of 19th Century

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• By 1840 Romanticism is worn out
• Variety of factors political, economic, social,
  scientific, incidental (death of main Romantics)
• Rejection of the metaphysical / transcendental in
  favor of the epistemological
• A new set of ethical, political, social challenges

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Romanticism
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Realism
Gustave Caillebotte, A Rainy Day (1877)
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Realism

• Reflection, mirror, reproduction
• Emphasis on daily life
• Objectivity
• Representation of what is visible, observable
• Urban
• Middle classes
• Well defined space and time (contemporary)

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Influences
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Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

• Positivism
• Rejection of metaphysics
• Faith in observable and verifiable facts, natural
  laws
• Belief in positive and material progress through
  science

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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

• Evolution
• Survival of the fittest
• Herbert Spencer applied darwinism to social and
  political sphere

1859
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Hippolyte Taine

• literary work informed by authors
• race
• environment
• historical moment

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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Gustave Courbet

• Aim to represent the customs, the ideas, the
  appearance of the times without prejudice or
  value judgment
• Represents humble, common figures

Stone breakers (1840)
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Naturalism Emile Zola (1840-1902)

• principal theorist and practitioner of naturalism
• art critic supporter of impressionists
• Rougon-Macquart series (20 volumes), including
  LAssommoir
• JAccuse (1898), considered by some the most
  important newspaper article ever written
• caricature that appeared in Punch

Zola at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
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Naturalism

• Not a break with realism, but an extension of it.
  Takes from realism
• the representation of daily life, average
  characters (slice of life technique)
• set in contemporary period
• plots that progress by means of causality
• the rejection of the fantastic and extraordinary
• the attempt to reproduce real language
• Basis on research

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Caillebotte, Floor Scrapers
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Naturalism

• The Experimental Novel (1879), Application of
  the scientific method to literature novel as a
  laboratory
• Importance of hereditary and environmental
  determinism
• Man seen as another animal (la bête humain)
• A Godless universe
• History, social and economic conditions shape
  protagonists
• Collective protagonists
• Includes all aspects of human experience (does
  not focus on the beautiful) sex, brutality,
  violence, crude language
• Image of reality emphasizes the social injustices
  and defects many readers saw in it a means of
  rebellion against the dominant classes

T. Lautrec, Medical Inspection
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Germinal (1885)

• Part of the Rougon-Macquart series (20 volumes)
• History of two related families
• Rougons upper middle-class
• Macquarts proletarian
• Chronicles private and public lives during Second
  Empire
• Deals with alcoholism, industrial confrontation,
  prostitution, etc.
• Title taken from the French Revolutionary
  Calendar first month of spring

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• Beginning
• landscape?
• The mine (Le Voreux) forum
• Village 240
• Étienne Lantier
• Initial presentation/characterization
  (description, values, characteristics, narrators
  language/tone) of
• Bonnemort
• Catherine
• Zacharie
• Jeanlin
• Maheu
• Maheude