
Although naturalist literature described the world with sometimes brutal realism, it sometimes also aimed at bettering the world through social reform.ĥ. In presenting the extremes of life, the naturalists sometimes displayed an affinity to the sensationalism of early romanticism, but unlike their romantic predecessors, the naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that lives were controlled by heredity and environment, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.

They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. American naturalism had been shaped by the war by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.Ĥ. Allusion: A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects the reader to recognize and respond to. Alliteration: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in poetry.ģ. An allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.Ģ. Allegory: A tale in verse or prose in which characters, actions, or settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities.
