Naturalism Movement In Literature

Paper Summary:

Describes Naturalism, its principles and methods. Influence of natural science. Comparison with Realism. Applies the literary style to work of Jack London. Uses his 1908 short story, "To Build A Fire" as an example. Views on heredity and biological determinism giving rise to simple characters dominated by strong passions.

From the Paper:

"Usually in the realms of literature and the arts each major movement can be seen as a rebellion against whatever came before it, so Romanticism upstages Classicism, only to be done in in turn by Realism as people weary of the excesses of one style only to rush headlong into the excesses of its opposite. But sometimes it happens that one style is replaced by an even more extreme version of itself, as was the case when Realism in literature and the visual arts was replaced in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries by Naturalism, a movement that was inspired by adaptation of the principles and methods of natural science, especially the Darwinian view of nature. One of the most perfect examples of this movement is Jack London s short story To Build A Fire , published in The Century Magazine in 1908 with its themes of the fragility of human survival and the ways in which we as ..."

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