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Impact of French Naturalism on American Critical Opinion 1877-1892

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William C. Frierson  and
Herbert Edwards
William C. Frierson
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
Herbert Edwards
Affiliation:
University of Maine
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Extract

When Main Street met with a startling good reception in 1920, Lewis was writing for a public that was ready for him. The way had been prepared by Huneker and Mencken and Shaw and George Moore and a self-critical national consciousness induced by idealistic extravagances during a war. Lewis neatly capped a progression. Back of him was Dreiser and back of Dreiser were Frank Norris, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane and the French naturalists. This line of development, of course, is sufficiently well known. It is also well known that American novelists of the 'nineties who were influenced by the French naturalists had a hard time getting started, even though they adopted a decorous treatment of sex and unconventional situations. Crane unsuccessfully sought for three years to find a publisher for Maggie before deciding to publish it himself. Hamlin Garland waged war against sentimentality and sensationalism in order to win a public for his own incisive writings of western life. He even tried to make the controversy one between a democratic and fact-loving West and an aristocratic East tied to traditions and sentiments. In order to attract support, Norris sought to emulate the epic qualities of Zola's writings by having each novel centered about some major enterprise or feature of American life, but his novels in the early 1900's had to make their way against a considerable amount of critical disapproval.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1948 , pp. 1007 - 1016
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 William C. Frierson, PMLA, XLIII (June, 1928), 545 ff.

2 English critics generally considered the Flaubert of Madame Bovary a naturalist, and most American critics did likewise. However, the matter was not settled to anyone's satisfaction in France. Zola's inclusion of Balzac as well as Flaubert among the naturalists would indicate that Zola intended the term naturalist to be all-inclusive. David Sauvageot felt that Flaubert was more of a naturalist than Zola; he felt that “réalisme indifférent” was that of Flaubert and his school; “réalisme didactique” that of Zola, Proudhon, and others. G. Lanson agreed with Zola that Flaubert founded the type of the naturalistic novel. On the other hand, Retinger, Martino, and Lalou did not consider Flaubert a naturalist. For exhaustive treatment see the following by William C. Frierson: L'Influence du naturalisme français sur les romanciers anglais (Paris, 1925); “The Naturalistic Technique of Flaubert”, French Quarterly, Sept. and Dec. 1925; Naturalism in French Fiction (Columbus, Ohio, 1930).

3 Nation, xviii (June 4, 1874), 365.

4 Oliver Wendell Holmes was never won over. As late as 1890 he commented of Madame Bovary in the Atlantic Monthly, LXV (April, 1890), 555, as follows: “That it has a serious lesson there is no doubt, if one will drink down at the bottom of the cup. But the honey of sensuous description is spread so deeply over the surface of the goblet that a large proportion of its readers never think of its holding anything else. All the phases of unhallowed passion are described in full detail. That is what the book is bought and read for, by the great majority of its purchasers, as all but simpletons very well know.”

5 For full treatment of American reactions to L'Assommoir as well as to other works of Zola, see Albert J. Salvan, Zola aux Etats-Unis (Providence, 1943), pp. 32–36.

6 lix (July 1879), 309.

7 x (June 21, 1879), 202.

8 xlv (April, 1880), 571.

9 x (Nov. 8, 1879), 359.

10 For a full account see Salvan, Zola aux Etats-Unis, pp. 36–39.

11 xxx (April 22,1880), 312.

12 xi (Feb. 14, 1880), 58. 13 XLV (May, 1880), 696.

14 cxxxi (July, 1880), 79.

15 xlviii (Sept., 1881), 432.

16 xxxiv (March 16, 1882), 233.

17 l (Oct., 1882), 324 ff.

18 xiii (Nov. 18, 1882), 401.

19 ii (May 20, 1882), 140.

20 iii (March 10, 1883), 104.

21 iii (Dec, 1883), 354.

22 xiv (April, 1883), 109.

28 ii (May 20, 1882), 140.

24 xiii (June 3, 1882), 175.

26 R. O. Beard, Dial (Chicago), iii (Oct., 1882), 130.

26 “They do the only kind of work, today, that I respect; and in spite of their ferocious pessimism and their handling of unclean things, they are at least serious and honest.… Read Zola's last thing, La Joie de vivre . … the work is admirably solid and serious.” Letters of Henry James, I, 104-105,

27 French Poets and Novelists (London: Macmillan, 1878), p, 102,

28 Salvan, Zola aux Etats-Unis, p. 68, The Boston Public Library was kind enough to consult indexes in an unsuccessful attempt to determine the authorship of the unsigned article.

29 XV (April 19, 1884), 127.

30 Literary World, xvii (Aug. 7, 1886), 264.

31 XVIII (May 14, 1887), 148.

32 Letters of Henry James, i, 104.

33 Harper's Monthly Magazine, lxxiv (April, 1887).

34 “When a realistic writer like Zola surprises his reader into a kind of knowledge he never thought of wishing for, he sometimes harms him more than he has any idea of doing. He wants to produce a sensation, and he leaves a disgust not to be got rid of. Who does not remember odious images that can never be washed out of the consciousness which they have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly retentive of evil words, and the images they present cling to his memory and will not loose their hold.”—Atlantic Monthly, LXV (April, 1890), 556.

35 xxiii (July 16, 1892), 245.

36 xviii (Aug. 27, 1892), 103.

37 xiii (Aug., 1892), 105.

38 CLiv (Jan., 1892), 91–92.

39 North American Review, am (Aug., 1891), 161. 40 Nation, LIV (April 28. 1892), 326; Critic, xviii (July 9, 1892), 13; Dial (July, 1891).