ABSTRACT
Naturalism found its chief outlet in the novel. In its concentration on the narrative Naturalism was following on its heritage from the great nineteenth-century novels of Realism. The task of definition is made difficult by the large number of novels to which the tag ‘Naturalist’ has been applied over the past hundred years. The Naturalist novel by and large is straightforward, indeed dull, in its narrative technique, rarely departing from nineteenth-century conventions. Often the characteristically drawn-out form of the Naturalist novel stems from the desire to trace the evolution of a human being from his origins and through the effects of milieu and circumstances. The German Naturalists were, as we have seen, much more interested in formal problems than any other group; as a result they focused more on drama than on the novel, and the few worthwhile narrative works they produced show a distinct inclination towards the dramatic.
