Soon after the appearance of the second of Flaubert's great works, Taine, by publishing Positivisme anglais: J. St. Mill) (1864), in which he gave an excellent summary and criticism of Mill's
with its insistence on the collection of attributes and on detailed description, supplied, for the assimilation of •the materialistic philosophy and its application to literature, a medium and a technique of which his compatriots were not slow to avail them selves. This method, joined to the scientific sensualism which Comte had established, and Renan had developed, under the name of Posi tivism, rapidly became a working theory for the adventurous litterateur. From that time on ward the collection of data of a biological and sociological kind, or, in other words, of de tailed information concerning heredity and en vironment, became for many French novelists the basic principle for the study, creation, and development of character. The brothers de Goncourt (Edmond, 1822-96 and Jules, 1830-70) in 'Germinie Lacerteux' (1865) immediately put into practice that minuteness of observation and that reporter-like assemblage of facts which was to become a special characteristic of the new realistic, or, as it now began to be called, naturalistic school. In 'Manette Salo mon' (1867) and
Gervaisais' (1869) they jointly continued the method, in which, in 'La Elisa' (1878) and other novels, Ed mond persevered for many years after his brother's death. Of the new school the de Gon courts regarded themselves as the legitimate heads, and Emile Zola (1840-1902) as their most promising disciple, with Henri Chard, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Leon Hennique, Guy de Maupassant, and a host of others as lesser satellites. Of these, de Maupassant, while re maining a naturalist, outgrew the circle in virtue of his native genius. Huysmans, in 'Marthe' (1876), a study in sordid prostitution, gave a striking example of the naturalistic, as distinct from the merely realistic, novel. Zola, however, speedily became the high-priest of the cult, the protagonist and propagandist of a savage naturalism. His theory of the experi mental novel, as he called it, was that it
a consequence of the scientific evolution of the age; it continues and completes the woik of the physiologist,* although he rather nullified this position when he laid down the definition that "the realistic novel is a corner of Nature seen through a temperaments He had been
publishing since 1864. His series of 20 novels, produced under the collective title
stjerne Bjornson (1832-1910), beginning with works of a lyric and romantic-religious char acter, produced in 'The Newly Wedded Pair) (1866) a realistic problem play, and in a long series of dramas and novels from 1874 to 1889 he exhibits the same realistic and analytic tendencies. Ibsen is also a realist, but he is a great deal more, for his works are, as a rule, too subtly complicated and too spiritual to be reducible to one classification. In Italy, Mathilde Serao (b. 1856) and, especially, Gabriele d'Annunzio (b. 1864), with his pagan sensualism, are perhaps the best-known repre sentatives of the realistic school. In Spain, Jose Maria de Pereda (1833-1906) was the pioneer modern
and he was followed by Benito Perez Galdos (b. 1845), Armando Palacio Valdes (b. 1853), and Emilia, Countess of Pardo Bazin (Senora Quiroga, b. 1851). Juan Valera (1824-1905), though not techni cally a realist, but rather tending consciously toward idealism in his novels, is, for all that, none the less real. In England, Henry Fielding (1707-54) insisted that the novel should show real life, and in his practice he found many 18th century imitators. In the 19th and 20th centuries among the great realistic novelists are lane Austen (1775-1817), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), Charles Dickens (1812 70), °George Eliot° (1819-80), George Mere dith (1828-1909), Thomas Hardy (b. 1840), George Moore (b. 1853), Herbert George Wells (b. 1866), John Galsworthy (b. 1867), and Arnold Bennett (b. 1867). Realistic dramatists are Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (b. 1855) and George Bernard Shaw (b. 18561. Many of the modern Hiberno-English novelists and drama tists are starkly realistic, and one or two of them frankly naturalistic. In the United States of America many realistic writers sprang up in the wake of thepropaganda which William Dean Howells (b. 1837), under the influence of Tolstoy, Valdes, and Galdos, carried on for many months in Harper's .Magaaine. The prin cipal American realists are Howells himself, who may be looked on as the creator of the Ameri can. novel of character as distinct from the novel of incident, Henry James (1843-1916) with his subtle psychology and his peculiar style, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen(1848-1905), and Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902).
In poetry realism has not had so much sway as in the novel or the drama. Poetic realism is mainly, .impressionistic and tends to symbol ism. It is found more or less developed in some of the poems of the German Arno Holz (b. 1863) and the French Paul Verlaine (1844 96), and it is the motive power of many of the writers of modern vers Libre of all countries, especially when they record the impressions of observed phenomena.
The recent tendency has in general been away from crude naturalism to a saner and soberer realism. Truthful portraiture is de sirable in literature, and in so far as realism and even naturalism supply solid and stabilizing literary elements they are to be commended. The high seriousness of much of modern fiction is attained by a proper use of such elements. It is against the abuse of the genre that the true artist, no less than the moralist,• must always protest.
Bibliography.- Zola, E,
roman ex perimental) (Paris 1880) ; id., 'Le naturaliszne au theitre (ib. 1881) ; id.,
romanciers naturalistes> (ib. 1881)R Dupuy, C. E,
Masters of Russian Literature) (New York 1886) ; Brandes, G.,