REALISM AND NATURALISM IN LITERATURE. Realism in literature means that the writer represents persons, scenes, things, and facts as they are, life as it is. The word is used in many senses—as opposed to romanticism, to conventionalism, to sentimentalism, to ideal ism, and to imaginative treatment. Sometimes it is a term of praise, in cases in which precision and vividness of detail are considered meritorious; sometimes it is used as a term of reproach as, for example, when it is contrasted with ideal ized description or representation. In modern times, and in particular during the greater part of the 19th century and the earlier years of the 20th, the use of the word realism has often im plied that the details brought out were of an unpleasant, sordid, obscene, or generally of fensive character. Naturalism in literature should mean a style or method of writing characterized by close adherence to, or faithful representation of. nature; but, in the hands of its most notorious modern exrnents, it quickly degenerated into a connotation of the more sinister features of realism. Thus a writer in the London Daily News, in June 1881, speaks of "That unnecessarily faithful portrayal of offensive incidents for which M. Zola has found the new name of " This "new name" soon thereafter became a technical term to denote that remarkable outflowering of real ism which predominated in French and other literatures for some 35 years from about 1860. It is obvious that in essence a distinction may properly be made between realism and natural ism as the words have come to be used. In practice, however, they are often regarded as one and the same thing, and in this article they may conveniently be treated together, although, in the course of it, it may be necessary from time to time to draw attention to the difference which actually exists.
In recent usage, the term realistic is tech nically applied to a 19th century school of writers; but realism, in its prime and proper sense, is as old as literature itself. We find it in Homer and Aristophanes: in the Old Testa ment; in the ancient Egyptian writings; in the earliest Saga literature of the Norse peoples; in the Indian, Japanese, and Chinese rogue stories of the 6th, 10th, and 13th century, re spectively; in the mediaeval Fabliaux; in Boc caccio and Chaucer; in the picaresque novels of Spain; in the Elizabethans; in Rabelais, Cervantes, and Voltaire; in Aphra Behn and Bunyan; in Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, as well as in Swift and Defoe. Realism was a pronounced feature of some of the later Greek and Latin literature. Thus Lucian (b. c. 120 s.p.), in satirizing, in his (True Story,' the extravagances of Eastern Greek romance, gives us himself very realistic details side by side with many a romantic and impossible adventure, and he is even more outspoken in 'The Carousal' and in 'Lucius, or the Ass,' if in deed he is truly the author of the last-mentioned work. Still more realistic in aim is the African Lucius Apuleins (b. c. 125 s.p.) in his 'Meta morphoses, or Golden Ass,' written in Latin. Unrestrained realism is exhibited by Gains Petronius Arbiter (1st century A. D.) in his in which he describes the debauched and dissolute condition of Roman society dur ing the early empire.
While the modern realistic novel may be said to take its remote origin from the Spanish de Tonnes) (1553), the first of a great number of picaresque, or rogue, stories the begetters of Thomas Nash's 'Unfortunate Traveller, or jack Wilton' (1594) and Richard Head's 'The English Rogue' (1665), in Eng land, and of Sorrell's 'Francion' (1622), Scar ron's 'Roman comique) (1651-57), Furetiere's 'Roman bourgeois' (1666), and Lesage's Gil Bias' (1715), in France—it is nevertheless the fact that the realism which sprang up in France early in the 19th century and afterward spread to other countries — England, Spain, Germany, the United States of America—was primarily a protest against romanticism. It may perhaps
be reasonably said to derive, directly or indi rectly, from Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, in his 'Confessions,' had taken care that the whole of male experience, even in things considered shameful and wicked and therefore usually kept secret, was revealed to an attentive world. Leaving out of account the practically isolated case of the 18th century Nicolas Edme Restif (1734-1806), known as Restif de la Bretonne and sometimes called "the Defoe of France,' sometimes Rousseau of the gutter," we shall probably be chronologically correct in say ing that the newer phase of realism began with Charles Paul de Kock (1794-1871), a master of the art of working up an interesting story by the use of simple and commonplace details, gathered from observation at first hand. He was author of about 100 works, the best known of which are perhaps le mauvais sujet' (1821), barbier de Paris' (1826), 'La laitiere de Montfermeil' (1827), and 'Andre le Savoyard.' Although 'Le barbier de Paris' was translated into nearly every European language, de Kock, owing to a poor style — he was of Dutch descent — and a cer tain aloofness from literary and political move ments, exercised no great influence on his French fellow-countrymen. The first of the 19th century realists to do that was Marie Henri Beyle (1783-1842), known as Stendhal, who, in 'Armance' (1827), 'Le rouge et le noir' (1831), and (La chartreuse de Parme' (1839), put forth vivid studies of social types, brimful of energy and passion. He was soon followed by Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), the novels of whose 'La comedic humaine' (1829 47), while ideal in conception, aimed to be real in detail — "human documents,' in fact — and shrank from the fullest exposition of neither vice nor passion. Next came Gustave Flaubert Who, according to Zola. gave, in 'Madame Bovary' (1857), the formula of the modern novel. 'Madame Bovary,' a close and minute study of provincial bourgeois life, is the epic of the commonplace, and was meant to be. as it certainly is, a bitter satire on the last ex aggerations of romanticism. In (1862), a study in epic realism, Flaubert ap plied the same method to the civilization of ancient Carthage, and he continued it in his celebrated picture of Paris life, 'L'Education sentimentale' (1869) and in his pessimistic tentation de Saint -Antoine' (1874). There is no doubt that Flaubert made a profound im pression upon his own age. Yet it is a strange commentary on his professed efforts that pne of the keenest of modern French critics, Ferd inand Brimetiere, decided that, while Flaubert was a master by as just a title as Balzac, and a far greater stylist, he still was a romanticist at heart. To a certain extent, his Conte& (1877) might be adduced in justifica tion of that opinion.