ABSTRACT
The key to the development can be understood generally and simply in the death of the anthropomorphic spirit, which might be called the most important intellectual event of the last two centuries, unless we say rather that it was busy dying for that time and longer. It is with this understanding that it proposes to introduce the discussion of modern fiction. The intellectual suspicion of the human intellect is the great theme which pervades modern fiction as much as it challenges philosophy. Naturalistic fiction, imitating the neutral reportage of science, tends to drown the subject in the context, because the context or scene is the medium for credibility. The opposite excess of the subjective method is of course to maroon the subject in a private consciousness, and question reality itself by the isolation of the subjective life. The conventionally defined naturalistic novel occupies a narrow segment of the history of fiction.
