Naturalism

ELT 36:3 1993 Naturalism Brian Nelson, ed. Naturalism in the European Novel: New Critical Perspectives. European Studies Series. New York: Berg, 1992. $49.50 IF THERE IS a unifying element in this ambitious and varied collection, it is not so much the discussion of "naturalism" as it is of "Zola," who appears in one guise or another in each of the fourteen essays. These compositions, written by a wide range of scholars and organized into three main sections—Poetics, Reception, and Text— individually and collectively demonstrate that addressing "Zolaism," perhaps because of the tangible, analyzable evidence of his writings, yields more satisfying results than wading into the theoretical and critical mire generated by the term "naturalism." A number of these items in the Poetics group involve especially heavy going. Part of the problem lies in the fact that several of the essays in that first section are translations which themselves were tightly reasoned but nevertheless esoteric. To wit: What the zoeme and the techneme have in common, and which explains their common function to incite and solicit, is thus the notion of value. They may both generate value (for example, by distinguishing positivity from negativity ) or appear to incarnate ambiguity or ambivalence (a door separates and at the same time brings together; it may be open, closed, or half-open; a staircase may ascend and descend at the same time; a passageway ... is simultaneously interior and exterior; a balcony is simultaneously a private and public place, etc.). This is the ambivalence that generates attention.... Perhaps: but the attention of the reader cannot choose but wander. Even in context, such passages, and there are many, seem, like the "staircase," to progress in no direction. It is true, however, as the editor Brian Nelson asserts in his introduction , that several of these discussions of the characteristic features of the genre do appear to open up fresh perspectives. In The Nature of Naturalism," for example, David Bagulej^s treatment of the "common fundamental poetics of degradation, disintegration, and dissipation" is quite impressive; as is Yves Chevrel's Towards an Aesthetic of the Naturalist Novel." Zola, Chevrel argues, "reminded his readers that naturalism was a question of method, not of rhetoric, that he was not inventing a literary religion', that he was but a . . . critic studying his time .. . choosing all kinds of subjects." The section on Reception, with five essays, focuses on the ways in which "naturalism"—read here principally as the translations of 400 BOOK REVIEWS Zola—were received by readers in such countries as Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, and on the wavering influence of novels like Theresa Raquin, L'Assommoir, Germinal, and Nana—and of course Le roman experimental. Each of these essays provides specifically fascinating insights about the clash of the naturalist phüosophy (however that philosophy was perceived in the different nations) with the inherent traditional literary culture. As Joseph Jurt points out in The Reception of Naturalism in Germany," naturalism was not a "global social movement like romanticism but a literary group within a field that had become autonomous"; and whatever cohesion it had was provided only by the figure of Zola. And in Germany, though Zola in translation came late in the century, his work had already been well received by a discerning public who read French. In short, Jurt finds, Zola did inspire a massive, positive response in Germany, even as he was attacked by conservative critics; and if only for a short time, he contributed more than Ibsen or any of the Russian authors to the direction of a new German literature. As for the reception of the Zolaist mode in Spain and Galicia, as treated in the essays of Eamonn Rodgers and Maurice Hemingway, the presence of censorship laws, the reluctance of academics to recognize the novel as a separate genre, and the difficulties of reconcUing Catholicism with naturalism (especially on the issue of free will) remained as major obstacles. The treatments of the novels of Benito Galdos, Leopoldo Alas, and the Galician author Emilio Pardo Bazan were especially intriguing in these two pieces; but as Rodgers concludes, the overall reaction in Spain to the tenets of naturalism "tells us less about literature...