ABSTRACT
Naturalism is more specific, it involves taking a quasi-scientific and demystifying approach to human beings as part of the natural world, just like other living things. Naturalism in literature is, therefore, largely a late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century phenomenon, reflecting a world from which, for a significant number of writers and readers, God has disappeared to be replaced, at least in part, by the secular system-building of thinkers such as Darwin, Marx and Freud. Realism, which goes back to the mimesis of the Ancient Greeks but becomes particularly prominent in Western art and literature in the mid-nineteenth century, involves attempting to represent the world truthfully, without distortion. Provocation is a significant aspect of much of the literature produced between the end of the World War I and the beginning of World War II. In American literature, there is a Lost Generation of writers who rejected the United States in favour of Europe.
