Naturalism

Zola said he wanted to do a doctor's work on a social body. Naturalism applies the method of investigation to the novel: a milieu is chosen, a mine, a laundry, a provincial presbytery, research is done on the spot, and the reader is shown how heredity and environment crush the characters. Hence scenes that contemporary critics judged obscene, the strike and famine of Germinal, the ruin of a servant girl in Hardy, Eça de Queiroz's priest caught in his own sin. The movement spread to Portugal, Italy and the United States.

works 6

• NovelThe Crime of Father AmaroO Crime do Padre AmaroEça de Queiroz · 1876A newly arrived priest and the young woman at whose house he boards: the provincial town is already watching them.Literature
• NovelThe House by the Medlar TreeI MalavogliaGiovanni Verga · 1881Novel of a family of Sicilian fishermen gradually brought down by misfortune and debt.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelGerminalÉmile Zola · 1885An unemployed worker goes down the mine and urges the starving miners to strike.Literature
• Short storiesThe HorlaLe HorlaGuy de Maupassant · 1887A solitary man records, day after day, the signs of a presence he cannot see.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelTess of the d'UrbervillesThomas Hardy · 1891A pedlar's daughter sent to claim kinship with rich relatives who are not her kin.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelAn American TragedyTheodore Dreiser · 1925The country tells itself at this time that any man can rise if he wants to. This novel takes a boy who has been given nothing, puts that promise into his head, and follows what it makes of him.LiteraturePublic domain