ABSTRACT
Naturalism, with its twin adjectives ‘naturalist’ and ‘naturalistic’, is a deceptive term. ‘Naturalism’ has a very long history and it was not introduced into the literary arena until relatively late. Originally ‘Naturalism’ was used in ancient philosophy to denote materialism, epicureanism or any secularism. Eighteenth-century Naturalism, as elaborated by the thinker Holbach, was a philosophical system that saw man living solely in a world of perceived phenomena, a kind of cosmic machine which determined his life as it did nature, in short, a universe devoid of transcendental, metaphysical or divine forces. Alongside the philosophical and the scientific, and connected with them, there was another usage of the word ‘naturalist’: in the fine arts. ‘Naturalism’ thus came on to the literary scene already loaded with meanings derived from philosophy, the sciences and the fine arts. Naturalism is therefore more concrete and at the same time more limited than Realism; it is a literary movement with distinct theories, groups and practices.
