Naturalism

"The term literary naturalism is used to describe a body of literature that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The central concerns of naturalism are the forces that shape and move humanity and our inability to control them. naturalism has its origins in the work of the French writer Emile Zola, who saw the naturalist as a scientist describing human behavior as a product of the forces that conditioned it, and of Charles Robert Darwin, whose On the Origin of Species (1859) postulated that humans evolved from lower animals and were therefore controlled by the same basic instincts. Darwin's theories led to the survival-of-the-fittest concept of human social evolution" (Werlock).

Basically Naturalism is a writing style that describes the world around us. It tells how things are, and it does not make up things to make someone's life sound better. Naturalism shows how nature can shape humanity, and it shows how humans cannot control it.

Some modern examples of Naturalism include TV acting. Many TV series are about families and their everyday life. They characters go about their day in a very life like way. In some sitcoms, the characters do things that everyday people normally do not do, but other sitcoms could be a completely reflection of how your day went that day. Some TV shows over amplify the struggles of everyday life, but those that do not, portray Naturalism.

Another example of Naturalism would be Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Ledger completely becomes his character to make his performance very believable.

"American literary naturalism was strongly influenced by the French writer Emile Zola and the nineteenth-century emergence of Darwinian science. Determinism, the concept that individuals are controlled by impersonal internal and/or external forces, is the philosophical basis of naturalism. From its American origins in the turn-of-the-century fiction of Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser, naturalism has been devoted to documenting, with apparent objectivity, the extreme experiences of characters existing on the margins of society. Like the so-called realists, naturalists are committed to documenting the surfaces of American life and to probing its concealed depths, but unlike realists, who most often treated recognizable middle-class lives, naturalists usually focused on the desperate existence of characters trapped in slums or in other oppressed settings" (Giles).





Works Cited:

Giles, James R. "naturalism." In Anderson, George P., Judith S. Baughman, Matthew J. Bruccoli, and Carl Rollyson, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition: Into the Modern: 1896–1945, Volume 3. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EAmL1255&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 4, 2011).

Werlock, Abby H. P. "naturalism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= Gamshrtsty0501&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 8, 2011).