Realism and Naturalism
Nineteenth-century realism aimed to represent ordinary life seriously and truthfully, and naturalism radicalized that aim with a quasi-scientific determinism. Comparing them across literatures raises the deepest questions about how, and whether, literature represents reality.
Definition
The comparative study of literary realism and naturalism as movements committed to representing everyday social reality, and of the theories of mimesis and the novel that underpin them.
Scope
Examines realism and naturalism as comparative movements: Auerbach's sweeping account of the representation of reality in Western literature, the rise of the realist novel and its social conditions, the Marxist defense of critical realism, and naturalism's deterministic intensification of realist method. Concerns mimesis, social representation, and the novel form across national traditions.
Core questions
- How does literature represent reality, and what makes a representation 'realist'?
- What social and historical conditions produced the realist novel?
- How does naturalism's determinism differ from earlier realism?
- How do realist and naturalist projects vary across national literatures?
Key theories
- Mimesis across Western literature
- Auerbach traced the changing representation of reality from Homer and the Bible to modern fiction, arguing that serious treatment of everyday life and the mixing of styles is the hallmark of Western realism.
- Rise of the novel
- Watt linked the realist novel's formal innovations to the rise of a middle-class reading public and an empiricist, individualist worldview in eighteenth-century England.
- Critical realism
- Lukács defended great realist fiction as capable of representing the typical and the social totality, distinguishing critical realism from naturalist mere description.
History
Realism arose as a dominant nineteenth-century mode in the European novel and was intensified by naturalism, associated with Zola's deterministic, quasi-scientific program. Its great comparative theorizations are mid-twentieth century: Auerbach's 1946 Mimesis (English 1953), Lukács's Marxist studies of European realism, and Watt's 1957 account of the social origins of the realist novel remain foundational.
Debates
- Realism versus naturalism
- Whether naturalism's deterministic, documentary intensification of realism deepens or impoverishes literature's representation of social reality, as in Lukács's preference for critical realism over naturalist description.
Key figures
- Erich Auerbach
- Ian Watt
- Georg Lukács
Related topics
Seminal works
- auerbach1953
- watt1957
- lukacs1950
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between realism and naturalism?
- Realism seeks a truthful representation of everyday social life; naturalism, associated above all with Zola, pushes this further by treating characters as determined by heredity and environment, applying a quasi-scientific, deterministic method.