AI overview
Naturalism was a literary movement that sought to depict life with scientific objectivity, presenting characters and situations as they actually were rather than through idealized or romantic lenses. It matters because it fundamentally changed how writers approached storytelling, influencing them to focus on the harsh realities of human experience and social conditions rather than escapist fantasy.
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Naturalism is a literary movement beginning in the late nineteenth century, similar to literary realism in its rejection of Romanticism (?, disputed claim; see "Zola as a Romantic Writer, 1896, "A Plea for Romantic fiction", 1901 by Frank Norris), but distinct in its embrace of determinism, detachment, scientific objectivism, and social commentary. Literary naturalism emphasizes observation and the scientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality. Naturalism includes detachment, in which the narrator maintains an impersonal tone and disinterested point of view; determinism, which is defined as the opposite of free will, in which a character's fate has been decided, even predetermined, by impersonal forces of nature beyond human control; and a sense that the universe itself is indifferent to human life. The novel would be an experiment where the author could discover and analyze the forces, or scientific laws, that influenced behavior, and these included emotion, heredity, and environment. The movement largely traces to the theories of French author Émile Zola.
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