Naturalism in american literature authors biography

Naturalists look at how environmental, social, and hereditary factors impact human nature, pixabay. Naturalism was a literary movement that focused on the objective and detached observation of human nature using scientific principles. Naturalism also observed how environmental, social, and hereditary factors impacted human nature. Naturalism rejected movements such as Romanticism, which embraced subjectivity, the individual, and imagination.

It also differed from Realism by applying the scientific method to the narrative structure. Realism is a literary movement from the 19th century that focuses on the everyday and mundane experiences of humans.

Naturalism american literature examples

In , Emile Zola , a French novelist, wrote The Experimental Novel which is considered a naturalistic novel. Zola wrote the novel with the scientific method in mind while writing with a philosophical perspective on humans. Human beings in literature, according to Zola, were subjects in a controlled experiment to be analyzed.

Naturalist writers adopted a deterministic view. Determinism in Naturalism is the idea that nature or fate influences the course of an individual's life and character. Charles Darwin, an English biologist and naturalist, wrote his influential book On the Origin of Species in His book highlighted his theory on evolution which stated that all living creatures evolved from a common ancestor through a series of natural selection.

Darwin's theories greatly influenced Naturalist writers. From Darwin's theory, Naturalists concluded that all human nature was derived from an individual's environment and hereditary factors. There is also a category of Naturalism called American Naturalism.