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Literature vocabulary · Literary Movements

Naturalism

Meaning in literature, with examples

/ˈnætʃrəlɪzəm/nounAdvanced term

In literature, Naturalism means: A late nineteenth-century development of Realism that showed human behavior as shaped by heredity, environment and social conditions, often in a harsh, scientific way.

In Turkish: natüralizm, doğalcılık

How it is used

Émile Zola is its leading figure; his novels, such as Germinal, study characters almost like scientific cases. In the US, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser are called naturalist writers. Critics describe naturalist fiction as bleak, deterministic and detailed.

Example sentences

  1. Zola saw Naturalism as a kind of scientific experiment in fiction.

  2. The naturalist novel shows a family destroyed by poverty and alcohol.

Common collocations

  • literary Naturalism
  • French Naturalism
  • American Naturalism
  • a naturalist novel
  • RealismA nineteenth-century literary movement that aimed to show ordinary life and ordinary people accurately, without idealizing them, often with attention to social detail.
  • literary movementA group of writers in a particular period who share similar ideas, styles and aims, such as Romanticism, Realism or Modernism.
  • settingThe time and place in which a story happens, including its social background, historical period and atmosphere.
  • novelA long story written in prose that describes imaginary people and events, usually long enough to fill a whole book and to develop characters in detail.

More terms: Literary Movements

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