On The Naturalistic Features In Stephen Crane' SWritings

Stephen Crane is a pioneer of American naturalistic literature.His works embody strong naturalistic characteristics.In The Red Badge of Courage(1895),Crane takes the lead in discussing the pessimistic fate of human beings and the indifference of nature,creating a variety of naturalistic characters and scenes.The Open Boat(1898)highly condenses his naturalistic features and systematically demonstrates the struggle between man and nature and the inevitable failure of mankind.Based on Emile Zola's naturalistic theory,the author of the present dissertation intends to explore the naturalistic features in Crane's writings from text construction,methods of creation and naturalistic poetics respectively through careful text analysis.From the research of three elements of text construction,such as characters,themes and plots,Crane's writings have distinct naturalistic features.First of all,unlike the “typical character” in the “typical environment” of realistic fiction,the character in Crane's works is a kind of absurd existence whose destiny is dominated by both social environment and natural factors.What's more,in Crane's writings,themes of traditional western literature such as society,politics and religion that are related to social ideology gradually disappears,while the “pessimistic determinism” of character's fate becomes the principle theme.Last but not least,different from the traditional writers who attach great importance to plots,Crane reduces the description of the plot and pays attention to the detailed account.Therefore,Crane differs from other literary schools in naturalistic text construction.From the perspective of the method of creation,Stephen Crane's works also contain naturalistic features.He upholds “authenticity” as the prime principle,placing the real people in the real environment and describing the truth of life without any fabrication.According to the “non-personalized” writing standpoint put forward by French naturalist writer Emile Zola,Crane produces plots truly and opposes to changing readers' mind through writers' preaching or comments.Influenced by scientific achievements in biology and genetics,Crane pays attention to the influence of physiological instinct on human beings,which provides a solid theoretical basis for examining characters from angles of physiology and heredity.In terms of naturalistic poetics,Crane has applied philosophical irony,Impressionism and symbolism to reveal the indifference of nature,to depict character's instant impression of scenes,events and his psychological changes,and to display the pessimistic fate of human beings indirectly.Based on the principle of “authenticity”,Crane directly records the details of real life,thus presenting the trait of photographic Impressionism.Symbolism and naturalism both emphasize the integration of subject and object.Crane adopts symbols as the general framework of the text and constructs the text with actual details.The combination of symbolism,Impressionism,and naturalism is the significant feature of Crane's works.In Stephen Crane's writings,naturalism runs through the whole story,while symbolism and Impressionism strengthen the reflection of naturalistic elements,which makes Crane's works more expressive and renders him more distinctive than other naturalistic writers.