American Naturalism's Worldly History

Abstract

THE NATURALIST FICTION THAT BEGAN TO APPEAR IN THE UNITED STATES in the s was part of a transnational phenomenon that saw this amalgam of meticulous description, ideas from the emerging social sciences, dystopian plots, and rejection of common literary mores spread from France, where it took shape in the s, to many parts of the world. By the s, varieties of naturalist fiction had appeared in countries across Europe, North and South America, and East Asia. The connections of American literary naturalism to the far-flung phenomenon, and in particular to the French version associated with Émile Zola, once were readily acknowledged by critics and literary historians. For several decades, however, the productive emphasis on the immediate social, economic, and political context in which writers work has drawn attention away from American naturalism’s transnational ties. Yet the circulation of naturalist