Short Story: Naturalism

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Short StoryNaturalism Impressionism

• (Crane, etc.)

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• NATURALISM
• offbranch of Realism, with similar foci
• applies principles of scientific determinism to
  literature
• NEWTON mechanistic determinism world runs by
  rational predictable systems cause/effect
• DARWIN biological determinism humans just other
  animals, distinguished only by sentience
  (self-awareness) and thought, but still ruled by
  biological needs (sex, food, shelter) and genetic
  proclivities
• MARX socio-economic determinism history as
  battlefield of (economic social) forces beyond
  individual control class struggle/warfare,
  individuals act out of own interests
• (FREUD, later) psychological determinism humans
  controlled by subconscious drives (neurosis,
  psychosis, phobia, mania) they cannot control

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• Nature in Naturalism
• Everything real (objects, actions, forces) exists
  in Naturetherefore, knowable through objective
  observations
• No supernatural realities exist (goodbye God
  heaven!)
• Humans respond to environmental forces, internal
  stresses and drives they neither understand nor
  control
• Humans as victims of environment, heredity,
  Fate
• Human illusion of influence or control in their
  lives/world
• Human illusion of comprehending or accurately
  reading the world

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• Natures indifference to humans
• Humans just other animals
• frank/realistic portrayal of human animals
  driven by fundamental urges
• Narrative does not take sides
• Neither praises nor condemns humans for their
  actions (b/c beyond their control anyway)
• Usually pessimistic about human capabilities
  life as a vicious trap
• Universe as amoral
• Universe not out to get humans, but not out to
  help them either
• Fate as metaphor for universal indifference
  you simply get what you get
• No design, no teleology fate only
  after-the-fact

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• If Naturalism the idea, Impressionism the
  style/execution
• Literary impressionism
• Similar to Impressionism in visual arts (Monet,
  etc.)
• Interested not in external notion of objective
  reality, but in actual physical appearance of a
  scene to the eye
• Emphasizes immediate physical sensation over
  thoughtful conceptualization
• Sacrifices external conventional description
  (where have time to think about details) for
  immediacy of confusing impressions (in the middle
  of experiencing a situation or scene)

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• visual impressionism portrays how the eye/mind
  actually sees (brief, small details immediately
  registered, not every plane in focus at same
  time)
• literary impressionism depicts reality as
  actually immediately experienced (as a rush of
  events or emotions with cause-and-effect
  relations but no other deeper meaning unless
  interpreted and supplied by the reader)
• Lack of coherence between elements and images
  reflects lack of moral concern for humans in
  mechanistic world
• (later Modernist writers like Woolf, Hemingway,
  Steinbeck, etc. take this to even greater
  lengths)
• Often, narrator exposition but not intrusion (b/c
  no moralizing commentary possible)