Naturalism

Realism pushed to determinism: characters as organisms shaped by heredity, environment, and economic pressure.

Specifications & Metrics

era

c. 1865 – 1900

region

France, then Europe and America

key figures

Émile Zola, Thomas Hardy, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane

exemplar

Germinal (1885); Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

introduced

1865

Core Principles & Analysis

• Zola's 'experimental novel' applied scientific method to fiction.
• Its characters are studied as products of blood, milieu, and moment.
• It fed directly into early sociological and behavioral readings of literature.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Naturalism (literature)