/kloc-In the second half of the 9th century, under the rule of the Second Reich, France's economy and overseas trade developed greatly, which accelerated the pace of colonial expansion. Charles Louis Napolé on Bonaparte pursues a high-handed policy in politics, persecuting factions and factions, and the domestic intellectual resistance movement is in full swing. 1870, France lost to the rising Prussia in the Battle of Sedang, which showed that France's hegemony in the European continent was threatened by the rising German-speaking countries. The intensification of domestic contradictions directly led to the establishment of the Paris Commune in 187 1. In this social and historical background, positivism, voluntarism, intuitionism and other philosophical thoughts prevail. Romanticism and realism, two branches of European literature in the19th century, have been questioned one after another. Simple romantic passion or spare no effort to expose reality can no longer satisfy intellectuals' desire for new cultural order. Romanticism and realism began to be more closely combined with popular scientific and philosophical thoughts, and evolved into some new literary schools. Naturalism is the most important.

Naturalism literature is the result of the evolution of realism literature by absorbing positivism, genetics and determinism.

theoretical basis

The positivism of French philosopher Comte (1789- 1857) is the theoretical basis of naturalism. Comte is one of the founders of classical sociology. He advocates only studying specific facts and phenomena, without examining the nature and regularity of the fields of facts and phenomena. This view is actually the most striking feature of naturalism different from realism. French literary critic Tanner (1828- 1893) absorbed and popularized Comte's viewpoint and put forward the famous theory of "race, environment and times". He emphasized that people are influenced by a specific era, a specific environment and a specific race, ignoring people's social attributes. Tanner's viewpoint is the embodiment of positivism philosophy in literary theory.

affected

Natural science influence

/kloc-In the second half of the 20th century, natural science developed rapidly, and the great progress in genetics was one of the important achievements. Luska, a geneticist, attributed all physiological and psychological conditions to heredity, which can be divided into congenital and acquired. Inheritance can be manifested as external similarity or internal similarity. The fault of a family member can affect the whole family, and its role includes almost all aspects such as society, politics and secularism. This blind exaggeration of heredity has greatly influenced naturalistic literary creation.

The early naturalist writers were deeply influenced by the deep-rooted realism in modern French literature, and admired Balzac, Stendhal and Flaubert. Zola thinks Balzac painted the whole world and created modern novels, and he is the father of naturalistic novels. Flaubert's Madame Bovary is regarded as a model by naturalists, although Flaubert himself is a realistic writer to a greater extent. naturalism

Human comedy

The writer advocates that he should disappear completely behind the narrative like Flaubert and become an indifferent anatomist. Mo Bosang, another representative writer of naturalistic literature, is Flaubert's proud disciple himself, and he inherited Flaubert's realistic writing method. 1880, Zola published two collections of essays, Experimental Novel and Naturalist Novelist, and officially named this literary trend as "Naturalism". In 40-year-old Earle's dictionary, "naturalism" is defined as "explaining phenomena through mechanism rules without seeking natural reasons". Zola introduced this concept into literature and advocated a creative idea of pursuing pure objectivity and authenticity and understanding human behavior from the perspective of physiology and genetics. Embodied in literary works, naturalistic literature tries to describe reality in detail, giving people an impression of real life and photography.

Although naturalism inherits some ideas of realism to a great extent, it is very different from realism in concrete creation. First of all, naturalism ignores the shaping of typical characters and only pursues their temperament characteristics and psychopathy, which is quite different from the principle of realism; Secondly, naturalistic literature downplays the plot, does not pursue dramatic twists and turns, and pursues the realm of "no twists and turns", only providing readers with a record of life, which is also contrary to the principle of realism. The depth of naturalistic literature's perception of social alienation is beyond the reach of realistic literature, which has profoundly influenced modern literature in the 20th century.

develop

Naturalism literature originated in France. The Gungur brothers are pioneers of French naturalism literature. They claim to be novelists who describe contemporary life, are willing to describe the lower classes and prefer to study special cases of pathology. Sister philomena describes a trainee doctor who died of purulent infection, while René Mopland satirizes bourgeois morality. The Gonggur brothers often analyze the characters in the novels as special spiritual cases.

Mutton roll.

In language, they destroy the logical factors of syntax and express short-lived impressions with dismembered sentences, bold new words and deliberately ungrammatical sentences. The Gungur brothers have a very high position in the history of French literature, and now the highest prize in French literature is named after them. Emile Zola (1840- 1902) is a representative figure and the highest achiever of French naturalism literature. His masterpiece, The Lugon-Macard Family, is a monument of naturalistic literature and another series of French novels after Balzac's Human Comedy, which includes 20 novels. This masterpiece is about "the natural history and social history of a family in the Second Reich", which is a chronicle-like historical picture of the Second Reich of France. Among them, the outstanding works are Nana, Pub and Budd. Zola began to write theoretical works in the 1980s, systematically expounding naturalism. The so-called "Mei Tang Group" formed around Zola is the core group of French naturalism.

Besides Zola, guy de maupassant (1850- 1894) is also an outstanding representative of naturalistic literature. Mo Bosang is a rare master of short stories in the history of human literature, and so is Chekhov of Russia. Mo Bosang, a disciple of Flaubert, a master of realistic literature, received strict realistic skills training under Flaubert's guidance in his early years, so the structure of Mo Bosang's short stories is very rigorous. Representative works include Suicide Ball, Life and Beauty. Mo Bosang's novels attach importance to psychoanalysis and the study of the hazy subconscious. His aesthetic thoughts are embodied in On Fiction. On the one hand, he insists on realism, on the other hand, he thinks that writers must remain indifferent. "There is no trace, it looks very simple, so people can't see or point out the idea of the work and can't find his intention."

In the1880s, naturalism transcended the borders of France and spread to other countries in Europe and America.

German poets "broke through" to publicize naturalism, and the establishment of "free theater" provided a stage for naturalistic drama. Gerhart Hauptmann (1862- 1946) is an important writer of German naturalism literature. Before Sunrise shows the social contradictions in Germany in a naturalistic way, and attributes the moral decay of the rich to the inheritance of alcoholism. The Weaver, which shows the contradiction between labor and capital and the workers' uprising, turned from naturalism to realism.

In Britain, influenced by naturalism, "Slum Literature" appeared, which is keen to express the dirty and terrible things in life. George gissing's works (1857- 1903) describe that the strong run rampant in the slums of London, and the poor can't get rid of hunger and overcome the genetic influence. Morrison's The Story of Inferior Alley describes the life of a poor man with serious mental defects, like a wild animal.

The Swedish playwright john august Strindberg (1849- 19 12) also belongs to naturalism, and later turned to modernism.

In addition, naturalism has a great influence in Italy, Russia, the United States and Japan.

in Japan

edit

Production and development

An important school of modern Japanese literature refers to the creation of a group of writers in the "naturalistic literature movement" at the beginning of the 20th century, mainly confined to novels. Writers include Shimazaki Tōson, Tayama Katai, Akio Tokuda, Nobuyuki Iwano, authentic Bai Niao and others.

Japanese naturalistic literature is a new literature that rises against the vulgar realism of "Yanyou Society". Naturalism literature has raised the banner of completely opposing old morality and old ideas, and advocated that everything should be written as it is; In terms of artistic form, they advocate "excluding skills", and in terms of language, they have successfully completed the innovation of "consistency of words and writing".

Naturalistic literary theory has become the dominant theory in the establishment of modern Japanese literature because the bourgeois enlightenment thought has not been thorough since Meiji Restoration, which has delayed the formation of modern literature. With the rise of Japanese militaristic forces, the gloomy atmosphere of social reality is getting heavier and heavier. Before the rise of naturalism literature, the formalism literature of "Yan Youhui" and the budding romantic literature movement pursuing positive ideals died out one after another under the destruction of gloomy reality. Japanese writers are generally pessimistic and disillusioned with the times, and they have found ideas that attract their interest from western naturalistic literary theory and the trend of thought at the end of the century. This is why naturalism has become a popular literary movement in Japan.

Japanese naturalistic literature was originally imitated and created by several writers according to this literary theory. 190 1, the pop songs beyond the hills, 1902 Kafka Gai Na's Flower of Hell, are all written according to Zola's naturalism theory. Xiao Shan pointed out in the preface of the work that the content described in the work doesn't matter whether it is good, evil, beautiful or ugly, and the writer's responsibility is to write it truthfully according to the "natural" phenomenon. In the postscript of his works, Gai Na advocates that writers should focus on depicting the "animal nature" brought by "ancestral industry". During this period, the writers' literary views on naturalism only stayed on the introduction of Zola's theory. During the period of 1906- 19 10, a group of naturalistic literary theorists and critics appeared, among which Hougetsu Shimamura, an aesthetician, Tanegawa Tianxi, a literary critic, and others, such as Katada Xian, Xiang, Xinghu Nakamura and Jiuxiong Benji, were the most influential. Hasegawa is the most ardent advocate of naturalism, and his representative papers include Art in the Age of Disillusionment, The Game of Eliminating Logic, The Sorrow of Reality Exposure, etc. In these papers, he put forward slogans such as "breaking the truth" and "the sorrow of the awakened one". The so-called "breaking the truth" means that writers should exclude all ideals and write "truth" objectively and realistically; The so-called "sorrow of the awakened one" refers to the writer's "deep sea of sorrow behind him" after "discovering truth but not falsehood", arguing that "this growing sorrow behind him is the real life of modern literature and art". In "On Naturalism in Outlook on Life", Hougetsu Shimamura expressed absolute doubts about all morals, obligations and ideals, and advocated that writers write their own confessions. He said: "Get rid of all hypocrisy, forget all affectation and seriously stare at your own reality. First stare, then you regret it. " Hougetsu Shimamura's ideas provide a theoretical basis for the deep-rooted tradition of "private novels" in Japanese literature.

Japanese naturalist writers have produced various negative factors under the influence of this literary trend of thought. On the subject matter, they accepted the subjective idealism of "only empirical facts or empirical phenomena are' true'" on the basis of naturalism philosophy, and thought that only writing about themselves could keep the life of literature-truth. They also accepted Shimamura's thought of "self-confession", thus limiting their writing scope to personal, mediocre and trivial daily life. In terms of creative methods,

Because we insist on "experience" and "feeling", we deny the role of imagination in literature, even the role of rationality, thus rejecting typical creative methods such as generalization and exaggeration. They emphasize the role of physiological heredity or sexual desire and devote themselves to describing the dark reality under this role. Judging from the "Awakened Sorrow", their works are very gloomy and full of pessimism and despair.

However, we can't generalize all the creative tendencies of Japanese naturalist writers, nor can we completely deny the works with naturalistic tendencies. For example, Shimazaki Tōson's Breaking the precepts and Tayama Katai's Rural Teacher are both works with positive social significance and critical spirit by adopting typical methods. Although influenced by naturalism, Junichiro Shimazaki's Spring and Home and Yamada's Life, Wife and Destiny still reveal reality and criticize society. As for Shimazaki's New Life and Tian Shan's Quilt, they belong to the so-called "confession literature" that describes personal life. This shows that Japanese naturalism literature itself has complicated factors.

magnum opus

Shimazaki Tōson's representative novel Breaking the precepts (1906) describes the development process of the protagonist Akimatsu Setagawa from observing the precepts to breaking the precepts, which reflects the entanglement between the modern concepts of eliminating hierarchical differences, advocating human rights liberation and freedom and equality and the feudal hierarchical consciousness left over from Japanese society, and also shows that awakening does not mean the change of the status quo. In the protagonist, it not only shows the resentment, dissatisfaction and resistance of modern Japanese youth to society, but also reflects their weakness.

This is the first mature naturalistic "problem novel" with Japanese characteristics. First of all, Breaking the Ring is written on the basis of field investigation of real events, and the characters and events in the novel have direct or indirect prototypes. Secondly, in this novel, Shimazaki Tōson describes the inner world of the characters and constructs the basic plot by confessing his privacy for the first time. Thirdly, the novel expresses the so-called "sorrow of the awakened one" and embodies the delicate and sentimental style unique to Japanese naturalism. Therefore, it was praised by Sosuke Natsume as "the real novel of Meiji era". At the same time, Breaking the precepts also opened a precedent of blind self-exposure and self-sadness for decadent naturalistic literature, which had a negative impact on modern Japanese literature.