Intro : Naturalism..

Question 1

Stephen crane date

Answer 1

Stephen Crane 1871-1900

Question 2

Genre principal de Maggie

Answer 2

Réalisme, naturalisme

Question 3

Naturalisme date et def

Answer 3

emblématique de fin du 19è
// zola : characters you put in a specific environment and you see how they react.

Question 4

Naturalisme ideas

Answer 4

they wanted to portray characters who will be driven by their animal instinct
→ Ici = lieu ou grand rêve américains ne peuvent plus tenir : people are doomed, stuck from the beginning, you won’t see ++ evolution. Can also be seen in the title “A girl of the street” = it is said in the book = a prostitute + a girl who lives in the street because home isn’t a comfortable place.
⇒ people cannot really evolve or escape from their environment
⇒ Some social classes are doomed and are not able to become rich, not able to succeed in the American Dream.

Question 5

18è VS 19è & courants littéraires

Answer 5

18è = early america : romans, exploration, sermons, texte politique
grand 19è = romantisme avec branche philo le transcendantalisme (au milieu grands réalistes dont Mark Twain)

Question 6

Social context end of 19th century

Answer 6

• Industrialization and the rise of urban centers : Lower classes were often neglected and were not considered as a topic.
• Rise of inequalities : in Maggie : all belong to the same social class, even PEte
• A more heterogeneous society : people are extremely rich or poor
• The rise of journalism and « muckrakers »

Question 7

muckrakers

Answer 7

terme pour parler des journalistes qui vont s’intérésser aux bas-fonds de la société

Question 8

Literary context

Answer 8

♥ Heredity and environment = man = a superior animal but someone conducted by two driving forces
environment in which he evolves = environment
environment in which he is born = heredity
⇒ Doomed : much you down is done according to circumstances

Question 9

By what is Maggie driven ?

Answer 9

Maggie driven by :
amour qu’elle porte à Pete
fuir son foyer dans l’espoir d’obtenir une vie différente (de sa mère) & espoir de la richesse = elle est fascinée par l’argent : tenues des femmes quand va au théâtre, le costume que porte Pete.
⇒ On pourrait avoir un narrateur qui a de l’ empathie envers Maggie MAIS NON : on observe juste Maggie aller vers sa marche funèbre sans que la narration nous pousse à être bouleversé. Dès le départ on comprend qu’elle ne va pas s’en sortir : indices dès le départ.

Question 10

Zola, Le Roman expérimental, 1880 : présente principe naturalisme

Answer 10

“Et le naturalisme, je le dis encore, consiste uniquement dans la méthode expérimentale, dans l’observation et l’expérience appliquées à la littérature.”

Question 11

June Howard: quote

Answer 11

“the idea that art and literature should present the world and people just as science shows they really are.” = something new

Question 12

Paul Binford quote

Answer 12

“The main criteria for naturalism is the idea of determinism, that humans (and animals) are capable of acting only within pre-determined environments.”

Question 13

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

Answer 13

Knowledge = pure science
Believe in the laws of nature
Objective observation of facts
Founded Positivism : all phenomena as subject to invariable natural Laws.

⇒ ++ rational : science became crucial to understand the way people act and live in society.

Question 14

Fiction def quote

Answer 14

Fiction “should above all be truthful rather than polite, amusing, or ennobling, and truth was achieved by depicting life in accord with scientific laws and methods.”
⇒ fiction is not meant to be entertained.
⇒ Litterature = a tool helping science to explain phenomena.
BUT some think literature should be less serious etc.

Question 15

Freedom in Maggie

Answer 15

Illusion of freedom before going back to the idea that freedom = sth she never really got. Sth that is ignored. Clinical description of feelings which are not tolerated in naturalism : it is not the main purpose
⇒ tout s’explique soit par désordre du système organique soit par conséquences.

Question 16

American naturalism VS French one

Answer 16

Not the same form of determinism as in Zola’s work for example.
American naturalism offers a SOCIAL OUTLOOK on the world and a study of the forces that destroy individuals.
It unravels the mechanisms that lead people to poverty and keep people in poverty.
It exposes the dark underside of the Gilded Age of the 1890s, in which technological advancements were proclaimed as beneficial to all humanity.

Question 17

Redéfinition de la figure de l’auteur

Answer 17

⇒ décortiquer gens avec procédés scientifiques.
⇒ un peu saddique. Redéfinition de la figure de l’auteur : pas de sentiments
partagé, livré de manière objective.

Question 18

Characteristics of American naturalism

Answer 18

Flawed characters
Brutes whose nature is determined by genetic and environmental factors. (Ex : Pete who is ++ violent and doesn’t care)
Their pursuit of money / sex is led by uncontrollable drives
Naturalism focuses on obsessive traits
Blunt artlessness = sans artifice
Amoral universe = no moral condemnation
Dark underside of the Gilded Age of the 1890s
Literature should serve a social purpose.

Question 19

Definition of naturalism by Donald Pizer, The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Answer 19

” It is not realism. It is a school by itself, unique, somber, powerful beyond words. It is naturalism”.

Question 20

Example of naturalist description

Answer 20

For McTeague was a young giant, carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet three inches from the ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong as vices, the hands of the old-time car-boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the carnivora. McTeague’s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.

→ Perso qui incarne la démesure
→ Comparaisons étranges
→ Animalité & vice

Question 21

WHAT IS NATURALISM? Definition by Frank Norris.

Answer 21

“The naturalist takes no note of common people, common in so far as their interests, their lives, and the things that occur in them are common, are ordinary. Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic tale. They must be twisted from the ordinary, wrenched out from the quite uneventful round of every-day life, and flung into the throes of a vast and terrible drama that works itself out in unleashed passions, in blood, and in sudden death.”

Question 22

Naturalism en une phrase

Answer 22

Naturalism = to portray certain characters and obsessions

Question 23

WHAT IS REALISM? Definition by Frank Norris

Answer 23

Realism is minute; it is the drama of a broken teacup, the tragedy of a walk down the block, the excitement of an afternoon call, the adventure of an invitation to dinner. It is the visit to my neighbour’s house, a formal visit, from which I may draw no conclusion. I see my neighbor and his friends - very, oh such very! probable people - and that is all. Realism … says to me … “That is life.” And I say it is not.”

Question 24

Naturalisme

Answer 24

⇒ On peut partir de personnages ordinaires mais il ne faut pas raconter l’ordinaire !
Maggie on ne raconte pas sa vie à l’usine, on raconte Maggie amoureuse de Pete,
Maggie qui va mal etc.
⇒ extract common people from ordinary situations and put them in situations to
unleash their passions.
⇒ Passe pour du réel mais on va toujours chercher des situations où le dram

Question 25

Realisme en 2 mots

Answer 25

ordianry people

Question 26

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

Answer 26

Novels were influenced by Darwin’s theory and his ambition was to show the mechanisms driving people’s desires and behaviors. ⇒ instincts..
Sister Carrie (1900)
→ Scandal and was banned because Carrie is promiscuous. Obsessed with a desire for social status which she associates with powerful men. She works in a department store before becoming a famous actress. Very material heroin who is contaminated by the vices of the city.
// Maggie who likes clothes. Obsessed with purchasing things. Maggie wished to be an actress

Question 27

Last quarter of the 19th century is characterized by:

Answer 27

Massive urbanisation :
Industrial prosperity ==> emergence of trusts and monopolies
Social divide between the rich and the poor:
Jeffersonian ideals are questioned. End of the pastoral ideal. End of an agrarian society. End of the democratic ideal.

Question 28

Nature in the 19th

Answer 28

a tool that challenges the American ideal because it allows to avoid the vices of the city

Question 29

Naturalism is a reaction to

Answer 29

Naturalism is a reaction to Realism, Romanticism and the Gothic tradition.

Question 30

Naturalism can be connected to

Answer 30

• Naturalism can be connected to Mark Twain’s vernacular language.
  ⇒ The US had trouble finding its own language, had to find new words to express a new reality that was not British reality. That’s why most of Twain’s text full with mistakes because he wanted to be very faithful to the vernacular language
• It can also be linked to Calvinism which is at the heart of the American construction : some people are to be saved, others are condemned to damnation.
  ⇒ link btw literature and religion
  ⇒ Maybe can be linked to naturalism : no possibility for Maggie to be saved.
  ⇒ there is nothing sacred about god. There not expecting some sort of salvation. ⇒ impossibility to be saved

Question 31

Naturalism & darwinian theory

Answer 31

This literature is influenced by the idea that men are conditioned by biological laws. Close to Darwinian theory that states that natural selection only allows people to develop and survive.
⇒ Sth contradicts the American Dream on which America was built : there is no possible success. The Survival of the fittest looms in this narrative.

Question 32

The detective novel and roman noir & naturalism

Answer 32

The detective novel and roman noir can be said to have their roots in naturalist fiction: lone characters / outcasts who are affected by the vicious environment of the cities they live in.
⇒ they were journalist and were able to describe the most reality.
⇒ Sth rooted in the dvpt of crime, massive corruption & often a character lonely, marginal affected by the corrupted environment they evolve in

Question 33

End 19th apparition of phil…

Answer 33

End 19th apparition of philanthropy = you like people, develops at the same time that huge inequalities develops

Question 34

Philanthropy birth

Answer 34

1889: Andrew Carnegie (industrialist, fortune in steel industry) writes « The Gospel of Wealth ». Birth of philanthropy, he suggested that “the wealthy should redistribute their wealth so as not to encourage “the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy”

Question 35

“the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy”

Answer 35

⇒ These adjectives = “the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy” = some words we can use to describe characters in Maggie

Question 36

1890: Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives

Answer 36

⇒ interest for the demography of Great American cities : the country is divided into 2 : image of division recurs through American history. 2 halves
the one who have
the one who have nothing

Jacob Riis was a journalist who investigated the living conditions of the poor and he published a landmark essay entitled How the other Half Lives, Studies Among the Tenements Of New York (1890).

It is a survey of the lower-class neighborhoods which was documented by many photographs, taken by the author himself.

Question 37

Rabelais quote sur la moitié

Answer 37

« La moitié du monde ne sait comment l’autre vit » Pantagruel, Rabelais, 1532.