Twentieth-century American Literary Naturalism

Twentieth-century American Literary Naturalism
Author: Donald Pizer
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 1982
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780809310272

Pizer explores six novels to define naturalism and explain its tenacious hold throughout the twentieth century on the American creative imagination.

The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism

The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism
Author: Donald Pizer
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1993
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780809318476

In his first book devoted exclusively to naturalism, Donald Pizer brings together thirteen essays and four reviews written over a thirty-year period that in their entirety constitute a full-scale interpretation of the basic character and historical shape of naturalism in America. The essays fall into three groups. Some deal with the full range of American naturalism, from the 1590s to the late twentieth century, and some are confined either to the 1890s or to the twentieth century. In addition to the essays, an introduction in which Pizer recounts the development of his interest in American naturalism, reviews of recent studies of naturalism, and a selected bibliography contribute to an understanding of Pizer's interpretation of the movement. One of the recurrent themes in the essays is that the interpretation of American naturalism has been hindered by the common view that the movement is characterized by a commitment to Emile Zola's deterministic beliefs and that naturalistic novels are thus inevitably crude and simplistic both in theme and method. Rather than accept this notion, Pizer insists that naturalistic novels be read closely not for their success or failure in rendering obvious deterministic beliefs but rather for what actually does occur within the dynamic play of theme and form within the work. Adopting this method, Pizer finds that naturalistic fiction often reveals a complex and suggestive mix of older humanistic faiths and more recent doubts about human volition, and that it renders this vital thematic ambivalence in increasingly sophisticated forms as the movement matures. In addition, Pizer demonstrates that American naturalism cannot be viewed monolithically as a school with a common body of belief and value. Rather, each generation of American naturalists, as well as major figures within each generation, has responded to threads within the naturalistic impulse in strikingly distinctive ways. And it is indeed this absence of a rigid doctrinal core and the openness of the movement to individual variation that are responsible for the remarkable vitality and longevity of the movement. Because the essays have their origin in efforts to describe the general characteristics of American naturalism rather than in a desire to cover the field fully, some authors and works are discussed several times (though from different angles) and some referred to only briefly or notat all. But the essays as a collection are "complete" in the sense that they comprise an interpretation of American naturalism both in its various phases and as a whole. Those authors whose works receive substantial discussion include Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, James T. Farrell, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Kennedy. Of special interest is Pizer's essay on Ironweed, which appears here for the first time.

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism
Author: Keith Newlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0195368932

After its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, naturalism, a genre that typically depicts human beings as the product of biological and environmental forces over which they have little control, was supplanted by modernism, a genre in which writers experimented with innovations in form and content. In the last decade, the movement is again attracting spirited scholarly debate. The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism takes stock of the best new research in the field through collecting twenty-eight original essays drawing upon recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies. The contributors offer an authoritative and in-depth reassessment of writers from Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London to Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck, Joyce Carol Oates, and Cormac McCarthy. One set of essays focus on the genre itself, exploring the historical contexts that gave birth to it, the problem of definition, its interconnections with other genres, the scientific and philosophical ideas that motivate naturalist authors, and the continuing presence of naturalism in twenty-first century fiction. Others examine the tensions within the genre-the role of women and African-American writers, depictions of sexuality, the problem of race, and the critique of commodity culture and class. A final set of essays looks beyond the works to consider the role of the marketplace in the development of naturalism, the popular and critical response to the works, and the influence of naturalism in the other arts.

American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream

American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream
Author: Charles Child Walcutt
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 1956
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0816658854

American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream was first published in 1956. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The literary concept of naturalism perpetually contradicts itself, oscillating between the transcendental affirmation of human freedom and the demonstration of its nonexistence. In this tension it gropes for forms that will satisfy both demands. These contradictions, and this divided stream, Mr. Walcutt shows, represent the central intellectual and social problem of the modern world, where the confusions between materialism and religion are ubiquitous. In tracing the development of naturalism in the novel, the author provides a background with chapters on naturalistic theory and the theory and practice of Emile Zola. He then traces the shifts in form through the worlds of Harold Frederic, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, Winston Churchill, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, James T. Farrell, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passes. College English commented: "This is a book that will clarify some of the confusion that teachers and students face when they discover that naturalistic novels do not always follow naturalistic theory." Writing in Prairie Schooner, Ihab Hassan pointed out: "In speculating on the origins of naturalism, in perceiving the inner contradictions of its spirit and the tensions of its form, and in following its full and vital sweep as it allies itself now with impressionism, now with expressionism, Professor Walcutt manages to throw new light on a major movement in American letters."

American Literary Naturalism

American Literary Naturalism
Author: Donald Pizer
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2020-10-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1785275488

The book collects Pizer’s late career essays on various writers and subjects related to American naturalism. Of these, two seek to describe the movement as a whole, six are on specific writers or works (with an emphasis on Theodore Dreiser), and two reprint informative interviews by Pizer on the subject. The essays reflect Pizer’s mature engagement of the subject he has spent a lifetime exploring.

The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism

The Urban Sublime in American Literary Naturalism
Author: Christophe Den Tandt
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1998
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780252024023

In this dynamic reappraisal of American literary naturalism, Christophe Den Tandt connects late nineteenth-century fiction to its romantic, urban gothic roots and to recent discussions of the sublime in postmodern theory. Den Tandt focuses on aspects of naturalist novels -- their use of hyperbole and hysteria, of the grotesque and the abject, of uncanniness and mesmerism -- that have often been left in the periphery of naturalist discourse. He argues that realistic strategies of literary representation can never succeed in depicting the urban environment since the logic of the city rests on a network of hidden relations. Naturalist texts try to resolve this dilemma by opposing sublime components and realistic documentary elements.

The Femme Fatale in American Literature

The Femme Fatale in American Literature
Author: Ghada Sasa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781613363423

This Bronze E-Book Edition for institutional buyers provides web reader access and download of an abridged version in PDF and device formats.

Sounding Real

Sounding Real
Author: Cristina L. Ruotolo
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2013-07-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780817317980

Examining American realist fiction as it was informed and shaped by the music of the period, Sounding Real sheds new light on the profound musical and cultural change at the turn of the twentieth century. Sounding Real by Cristina L. Ruotolo examines landmark changes in American musical standards and tastes in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and the way they are reflected in American literature of the period. Whereas other interdisciplinary approaches to music and literature often focus on more recent popular music and black music that began with blues and jazz, Ruotolo addresses the literary response to the music that occurred in the decades before the Jazz Age. By bringing together canonical and lesser-known works by authors like Theodore Dreiser, Kate Chopin, Harold Fredric, James Weldon Johnson, Willa Cather, and Gertrude Atherton, Ruotolo argues that new, emerging musical forms were breaking free from nineteenth-century constraints, and that the elemental authenticity or real-ness that this new music articulated sparked both interest and anxiety in literature: What are the effects of an emancipated musicality on self and society? How can literature dramatize musical encounters between people otherwise segregated by class, race, ethnicity, or gender? By examining the influence of an increasingly aggressive and progressive musical marketplace on the realm of literature, Sounding Real depicts a dynamic dialogue between two art forms that itself leads to a broader discussion of how art speaks to society.

Bitter Tastes

Bitter Tastes
Author: Donna M. Campbell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2016
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 082034172X

Challenging the conventional understandings of literary naturalism defined primarily through its male writers, Donna M. Campbell examines the ways in which American women writers wrote naturalistic fiction and redefined its principles for their own purposes. Bitter Tastes looks at examples from Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, and others and positions their work within the naturalistic canon that arose near the turn of the twentieth century. Campbell further places these women writers in a broader context by tracing their relationship to early film, which, like naturalism, claimed the ability to represent elemental social truths through a documentary method. Women had a significant presence in early film and constituted 40 percent of scenario writers--in many cases they also served as directors and producers. Campbell explores the features of naturalism that assumed special prominence in women's writing and early film and how the work of these early naturalists diverged from that of their male counterparts in important ways.

The Vast and Terrible Drama

The Vast and Terrible Drama
Author: Eric Carl Link
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0817358854

A broad treatment of the cultural, social, political, and literary under-pinnings of an entire period and movement in American letters The Vast and Terrible Drama is a critical study of the context in which authors such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London created their most significant work. In 1896 Frank Norris wrote: "Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic tale. They must be twisted from the ordinary . . . and flung into the throes of a vast and terrible drama." There could be "no teacup tragedies here." This volume broadens our understanding of literary naturalism as a response to these and other aesthetic concerns of the 19th century. Themes addressed include the traditionally close connection between French naturalism and American literary naturalism; relationships between the movement and the romance tradition in American literature, as well as with utopian fictions of the 19th century; narrative strategies employed by the key writers; the dominant naturalist theme of determinism; and textual readings that provide broad examples of the role of the reader. By examining these and other aspects of American literary naturalism, Link counters a century of criticism that has perhaps viewed literary naturalism too narrowly, as a subset of realism, bound by the conventions of realistic narration.