Opening
1 Good afternoon everyone, I’m honored to represent my group to stand here and talk about the American Naturalism with you today.I hope you can enjoy it.We always say that literature originates from life.Naturalism is probably the most faithful one to describe the life.In the world of naturalism we can hardly enjoy ourselves.The whole picture of naturalism is somber and dark; and the general tone is hopelene and even despair.So before we go into it there’s something that I hope you can remember about the naturalism.2 We can finds humanistic values in these naturalistic works.In the works there is a desire to aert one’s human identity, to define oneself against the social and natural forces one confronts.Whenever we find the weakne of ourselves we try to fight against it.History background Social background During 1980s (the decades after the Civil War) the United States were changing into “Modern America” in the economic, social and cultural aspects.Industrialism, science and the new philosophy of life influenced the change of the country.The spread of industrialization created extremes of wealth and poverty.The Proletariat workers\' life was decided by the external forces beyond their control.There appeared a lot of slums.The conditions in the slums became worse and worse.The city poor lived a life of insecurity, suffering and violence.
Westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast.But the settlers found themselves controlled by the cruel forces as railroad companies.These forces charged heavy rates and drove farmers to bankruptcy.Life became a struggle for survival.Man is helple and insignificant in a cold world.Culture background The literature climate of the country was also changing.Apparently the realism writers were too old and too set in their ways to re-orient themselves in the new period.Realism was now too restrained and genteel in tone to tell the truth of the harsher realities of American life.Darwin & Spencer At the same time the spread of Darwin’s theory of evolution changed people’s ideology.Darwin, in On the Origin of Species referred that humans are highly evolved animals.(first)Herbert Spencer is English philosopher.He adapted the theory of evolution into a social system in which those individuals, species, or races with the best acquired characteristics would survive.(social Darwinism) émile Zola (1840～1902) French writer 对比他们的不同
Zola held that the literary artist “must operate with characters, paions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies.” Human beings as \"products\" should be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.He dared to describe the bloody scenes of the life and have the extraordinary and exceive description in human nature.The surroundings and heredity can decide one’s destiny.French Naturalism with its new techniques and new ways of writing, appeal to the imagination of the younger generation like Crane Norris and Dreiser.Put yourself on the operating table.加结语） Definition Let’s see the general definition of the naturalism.The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings.Thus, if a writer wishes to depict life as it really is, he or she must be rigorously.Features of Naturalism 1.Human is controlled by laws of heredity and environment and has no free will or choice (determinism).The universe is cold, indifferent, and eentially Godle, man was enslaved, they are helple, insignificant and lacking dignity.Everything is determined by a complex of internal chemisms and by the forces of social preure.2.The naturalist writers report the life of the helple people truthfully and objectively.They write their novels with a paion for scientific accuracy.There are a lot of factual details in their works.They paint life as it is lived in the slums, and are blamed of telling just the ugly side of it.The typical settings are slums, sweatshops, factories, farms.3.The naturalists are different from the realists.Though the naturalists write about real life, they do not look at the average.They look at the violent, unpleasant and ugly sides of life.Instead of reflecting the middle-cla life, they write about the life of failure, poverty and even crime.Characters are always ill-educated or lower-cla whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and paion. The reality is found when the forces of Nature are most powerful in checking human desires, in keeping humans from realizing their dreams.extreme experiences 4.There are le happy ending in the naturalistic fictions than in the realistic ones.The tone of Naturalistic writings is more ironic and peimistic and le sympathetic and serious than realistic writings.5.Life became a struggle for survival. Therefore, naturalistic novels reflect the struggle of man to adapt to environment.However the characters in the novels never give up.They died, but they didn’t admit defeat.
Representative writers • The young writers were not admitted by the critics of that time and some of there books were forbidden because of their truly reveal of the life.Naturalistic writers cleared the way for the next generation, “the lost generation” of the 1920s.
In theme they represented the life of the lower claes truthfully and broke into such forbidden regions as violence, death, and sex.In technique their works exhibit honest skills and artistry.• •
Stephen Crane
Crane\'s works reflect many of the major artistic concerns at the end of the nineteenth century, especially naturalism, impreionism, and symbolism.his first book, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) transitional period a sympathetic study of an innocent and abused slum girl Maggie descents into prostitution and her eventually suicide.the red badge of courage
Fleming, a young recruit under fire for the first time in an unnamed battle of the Civil War.A farm boy whose struggle with his emotions might be that of the eternal recruit in any battle of any war, Henry has dreamt of fighting heroically in \"Greek-like\" battles.In first battle, Fleming witneed the real, cruel war and the death of soldiers.He began to run like a wild animal.At the same time, he wanted to own a wound ---“the symbol of courage”.In his way of return, he was hit by a scared soldier and accidentally got the “the red badge of courage”.Yet he received great praise and careful care because of this “red badge”.In the second war, Fleming began to act like a real hero to fight with his enemy.He was like a war beast and fired without a stop until his comrades remind him of the retreat of the enemy.He became a real man.Comments The Red Badge of Courage is often considered one of the best American war stories ever written, even though the author was born after the events and never saw battle himself.His purpose in writing the book was to rewrite the traditional hero, explore the complicated mental world and instinctive fear, and also to criticize the insignificance of war.It is also a psychological novel.
Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser read voraciously by himself.He immersed himself in Dickens and Thackeray, read widely Shakespeare, and tasted Fielding, Pope, Thoreau, Emerson, and Twain, but his true literary influences were from Balzac, Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.Sister Carrie A country girl comes to Chicago to look for a better life.On the train, she gets acquainted with a traveling salesman, Drouet.She first stays with her sister.However, her sister is too poor to keep her.Then when she is seriously ill, Drouet comes to her rescue and takes her home.Later, her beauty attracts Drouet’s friend, Hurswood.Hurswood deserts his comfortable home and family, and forces her to elope with him.For sometime, they experience terrible poverty.Sister Carrie goes out to work on the stage and becomes succeful.But Hurswood proves himself to be unfit.He tries different jobs but fails.Then Sister Carrie deserts him.On a cold winter night, he commits suicide.Comments Materialism, including the desire for money, is an important theme in Sister Carrie.The materialism is shown mostly through Carrie\'s character but also through Hurstwood, a man with a respectable life and money, who still wants more and for that reason commits a crime.The city in itself is also a place of materialism, it is a place that offers all kinds of amusements, pleasures and things to buy, but to participate in what the city has to offer one has to have money.• Style
– (1) Lack of concision, without good structure.And readers are sometimes burdened with maive detailed description of characters and events.– (2) Lack in imagination, journalistic method
– (3) He broke away from the gentle tradition of literature and dramatized the life in a very realistic way.There is no comment, no judgment but facts of life in the stories.His style is not polished but very serious and well calculated to achieve the thematic ends he sought.Franklin Norris
Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870.His father, Benjamin, was a self-made Chicago busineman and his mother, Gertrude Glorvina Doggett, had a stage career. In 1884 the family moved to San Francisco where Benjamin went into real estate.
In Paris where he studied painting for two years and was exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola He attended the University of California, Berkeley between 1890 and 1894 where he picked up the ideas of human evolution of Darwin and Spencer, that are reflected in his future writings. Although he did not openly support socialism as a political system, his work neverthele evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist/progreive
Comment on The Octopus The railroad is compared to octopus with millions of tentacles.It illustrates how social and economics conditions ruined the lives of innocent, powerle people.
But Norris did not seem to blame the railroad officials for the tragedies.To him, conditions, natural forces, not men were responsible for what had happened, and the laws of nature could ruin an insignificant farmer as well as a financial superman.
The novel reveals his determinist view clearly.
