Last month, (November 2015), a former colleague rang me up asking for a clarification regarding
‘Realism’ and ‘Naturalism’ which
his daughter needed as part of an
assignment. Clarifying over the telephone using technical terms, I knew
will not work…So I prepared the following and emailed it to my
colleague requesting for
clarification if required. I did not receive a call…and
I presume this material proved useful.
*They are two separate literary movements with lots of
similarities and differences.
*Realism shows the world as it is while Romanticism shows
the world as the heart tells us it
should be. Naturalism shows the
world as
man usually is with hidden animal instincts.
Realism
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Naturalism
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Popular between 1861- 1914
*An artistic
movement in 19th c France
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*Popular between 1890
- 1915
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*Artists and writers strove for detailed
realistic and factual description. They tried to represent events and social
conditions as they actually are, without idealization.
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*Describes a type of literature that
attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its
study of human beings.
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*Realist novelists did not follow
established tradition- a formal plot structure and a series of events leading
to a climax and resolution because
they believed that life did not follow such patterns.
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*Naturalistic novelists like Jack London
did have plots for their novels. But writers rejected the notion of free will and
presented characters whose behaviour was determined by “nerves and blood”.
*So themes of Naturalism in Literature
included violence, taboo etc.
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Characters
of Realist novelists like Mark Twain(American) and Anton Chekov(Russian)
were ordinary people. Writers used
ordinary speech and dialect .
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Characters of
Naturalistic novelists Emlie Zola
are usually of the low-socio economic class.
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Characters are in control of their own destiny and
are superior to their circumstances.
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Characters
do not have free will (determinism) and
showed a naturalist
tendency to depict primal urges which
is powerful than higher thinking.
*
Emlie Zola’s novels showed a frankness about sexual functions, shocking
readers resulting in banning of his
works.
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Realistic
drama is a representation of life on
the stage, portraying life as we know it.
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In
Naturalistic drama, the actors behave
‘as they would’ not ‘as they could’. [That is, in Realistic drama the actors would rarely
act facing their back to the audience, but it is usually so in Naturalistic drama
because the actor attempts to act
exactly as in real life, unaware that
he is presenting before an audience]
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Specimen
lines from Poem
Like A Flower
Plucked a flower just for me,
You fucked it up, like you fucked up me… You didn’t water it, you didn’t lavish it in sunlight, You watched it wither. You watched it die. You crushed the flower with your careless palms, You stomped the petals to dust, The stem, the thorns and all… You crushed my heart with your greedy hands, You squeezed it dry.
….
by Tory Edana Talbott |
Specimen lines
from Poem
George Sterling
I saw a man open an iris petal.
He ran his finger underneath the edge,
unfolded it, and smoothed it out a little,
not as one guilty of a sacrilege —
because he knew flowers, and understood
that what he did would maybe help them grow
-
though for a moment he was almost God.
…
by Jack London
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The following photo
appeared in The Hindu, Monday
18,August 2014…and I think
is illustrative of ‘Realism ‘ and ‘Naturalism’.
Posted by Dr.C.Praveen