Naturalism and romanticism: The evolution of American literary naturalism in the nineteenth century

Eric Carl Link, Purdue University

Abstract

The focus of this study is on the development of American literary naturalism in the nineteenth century. Its primary concerns are defining "American literary naturalism," exploring its intellectual, historical, and critical contexts, and positioning it vis-a-vis other aesthetic traditions of the nineteenth century. American literary naturalism has been too closely associated with the realistic novel and with both scientific and philosophical naturalism. These associations have tended to predetermine the genre, form, and philosophical message of naturalistic texts. By severing these ties through the creation of a more accurate definition of literary naturalism, one observes that when American literary naturalists in the late nineteenth century negotiated naturalist theory into narrative form, they did so by turning to the tradition of American romance for generic models. An exploration of nineteenth-century critical theories of the novel and the romance, of the aesthetic theories of the literary naturalists themselves, and of the transgeneric features of the modern romance, reveals the continuities between the American literary naturalists and antebellum romance writers such as Brown, Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville. Likewise, contrasting naturalism with both realism and idealism highlights the relationship between naturalism and romanticism, as does the juxtaposition of the "negative" literary naturalism of Norris, Crane, and London, with the "positive" literary naturalism of utopian writers such as Edward Bellamy.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Thompson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature

COinS