He realism was a literary movement born in the second half of the 19th century, which sought for art to show reality in a objective and using the simple language of everyday speech.
Influenced by the development of the natural and social sciences, realist writers observed and documented attentively everyday life. His goal was to create works full of details that resembled the real world as much as possible.
He naturalism, instead, was a literary movement considered as a more comprehensive realism. It was characterized by being highly scientific, taking various principles of determinism and materialism as the basis of literary creation.
In addition to observing and documenting everyday life, naturalist authors they experienced with their characters and considered that their freedom was determined by their social context and their physical characteristics.
Realism Naturalism Definition It is a literary movement that aims to show reality as it is presented, objectively, observing, documenting and presenting facts of the real world, abandoning the style of romanticism. It is a literary movement in which reality is represented objectively, with a scientific, positivist and deterministic approach, where the actions of the characters were determined by their social context and their physical characteristics. Main features Inspired by the development of science and technical advances. Opposed to the ideals of romanticism. Try to portray reality faithfully and objectively. Its authors observe and document real-life events, places, and people. Abandonment of the figurative style of romanticism, adopting a more colloquial and simple language. Descriptive and detailed style of objects, places and characters. Predilection for prose and the genre of the novel. It shares many characteristics with realism. He is a scientist, he tries not only to portray reality faithfully and objectively, but also seeks to interpret it. It is deterministic and materialistic, the decisions of the characters are dictated by their social context and physical characteristics. A more acute degree of observation, documentation and experimentation by the authors. Highly descriptive and detailed style. Type of narrator most used Omniscient in the third person. Omniscient in the third person. Type of main characters They are generally bourgeois individuals, although it can involve lower class characters. Generally poor people, workers or with some type of condition, from the lower class. Authors Stendhal, Honoré Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Charles Dickens.
Émile Zola, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Antón Chéjov, Rómulo Gallegos, among others.
What is realism?
In literature, realism was an artistic movement of the mid-19th century that set out to show reality as it is, in a way that objective. He used the observation and documentation of facts, people and places, drawing the world in the texts in detail.
As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of new political and economic classes in Europe, the aesthetic vision of the representation of the world was affected. Furthermore, the development of experimental science and the study of society were important influences within this artistic movement.
Realist authors favored the concrete experiences of people and the faithful descriptions of the facts they observed. Inspired by scientific development, they abandoned the subjectivity of romanticism, opting for a more objective style.
Realism as a movement sought to draw reality, describing the world in which the works took place, as if it were a painting or a photograph. The characteristics of the characters, both physical and psychological, were described with the presence of an omniscient narrator.
The consolidation of the bourgeoisie was key for the royalist movement to take place. The art was intended to reflect more on this class, with characters that represented it.
Social criticism was also a characteristic point of this movement. The authors sought to go beyond entertainment and denounce those things of the time that caused evil in society.
For realist and naturalist authors, writing prose for the novel was the ideal way to create their works. This genre allowed an approach to reality similar to that of scientific essays, with greater possibilities of creating a narrative world that was credible. In addition, a simpler way of writing was chosen and attached to the way people speak, making use of colloquial language.
Characteristics of realism
His intention is to portray reality objectively. Inspired by scientific development, he turns to the observation of facts, documenting events, places and people. It has a descriptive style of the outside and psychological world of the characters. He has a critical attitude from the point of view of the author, who uses the literary work to describe and denounce and not just to entertain. His characters are mostly bourgeois. Predominantly omniscient narrator and use of the third person. Local or colloquial language and little idealistic, opposed to the romantic style. The represented world is known to the author, abandoning the use of fantastic elements. The characters act according to the situation in which they find themselves.
Representatives of literary realism
Authors Works Gustave Flaubert (French, 1821-1880)
Madam Bovary (1856) Stendhal (French, 1783-1842)
The red and the black (1830) Honoré Balzac (French, 1799-1850)
Eugenia Grandet (1833) Benito Pérez Galdós (Spanish, 1843-1920)
the golden fountain (1870) Leopoldo Alas “Clarín” (Spanish, 1852-1901)
The Regent (1885) Juan Valera (Spanish, 1824-1905)
Pepita Jimenez (1874) Charles Dickens (English, 1812-1870)
david copperfield (1850) José López Portillo y Rojas (Mexican, 1850-1923)
The plot (1898)
What is naturalism?
Naturalism is a literary movement originated in the last third of the 19th century and founded by the French novelist Émile Zola (1840-1902), who captured the basic ideas of naturalism in his essay the experimental novel (1880). This movement is linked to realism, but it exposes its main characteristics in a more exhaustive way.
This movement considered that events and the context determine the actions of people, that the novelist should proceed in writing in the same way that a scientist does science. In addition, he considered that the author should not only describe the observed reality, but should also experiment with the characters, placing them in different situations and showing their behavior.
Was influenced by determinism, according to which there is a causal order that determines the behavior of the human being. Thus, the economic context and the social situation would dictate the behavior of the characters. The author worked on the characters, experimenting with them in various situations and showing how their behavior was commanded by their social and biological context.
In addition to determinism, naturalism also started from the Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and materialism. The characters were subject to their own physical characteristics, from which their behavior and feelings emerged. This movement was secular and spirituality was subsumed in the natural world.
Like realism, naturalism was inspired by the natural sciences and social positivism, albeit in a more profound way. The authors methodically observed reality and documented their findings, using them as the basis for writing the work.
However, naturalism differs from realism because it is a literary movement that is more representative of the lower and marginalized classes. His characters were workers, poor people, the sick and others who were not normally protagonists in literary works.
Society was presented from a much more pessimistic perspective, and this was the promoter of those negative situations that dominated the lives of the characters.
Characteristics of naturalism
Seek objectivity and reject subjectivity. He is a scientist, he proposes observation and experimentation as keys in the artistic work of the novelist, which is equated to the work of the scientist. In the construction of the work, the author tries to reproduce, describe and interpret the observed reality as much as possible. He is deterministic, which means that the behavior of the characters is determined by their social context and their natural impulses. The author experiments with the characters, based on their physical and social conditions, which generally present some type of physical or psychological problem. The language used is even more colloquial than in realism, coming to use the jargon and vocabulary used in real life in an even more detailed way. He presents reality in its crudest expressions, presenting both the good and the bad, emphasizing the miseries of the poorest classes. It is amoral, in the sense that reality is presented as it is, without making a value judgment on what it is written about.
Representatives of literary naturalism
Authors Works Émile Zola (French, 1840-1902)
nana (1890) Emilia Pardo Bazán (Spanish, 1851-1921)
the grandstand (1883) Anton Chekhov (Russian, 1860-1904)
The three sisters (1901) Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (Spanish, 1867-1928)
The four horsemen of the apocalypse (1914) Manuel Zeno Gandía (Puerto Rican, 1855-1930)
the pond (1894) Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian, 1828-1906)
Spectral (1881) Rómulo Gallegos (Venezuelan, 1884-1969)
Miss Barbara (1929)
Historical context of realism and naturalism
Realism and naturalism were influenced by various events that occurred before and throughout the 19th century.
The revolutions that occurred during the 19th century in Europe fueled class consciousness among various social groups.
An example of this was the so-called Spring of the Peoples of 1848. This was the consequence of an agricultural and commercial crisis that hit France in 1847, and that led to the general uprising of the working class and the confrontation with the bourgeois class.
In addition, the fight for civil rights was a factor that impacted the social landscape. Until then, politics in France and the rest of Europe favored the upper bourgeois classes more than the middle and working classes.
Clothed with political and economic power, the gentry of the time had a conservative and secular worldview. Influenced by more materialistic philosophical perspectives and the advances of science, it would place emphasis on the observed facts and the explanation of reality.
On the other hand, the…