Modern European Intellectual History

1
Modern EuropeanIntellectual History

• Lecture 3
• From Naturalism to Decadence
• January 30, 2008

2
outline

• intro positivism
• naturalism as positivism in literature
• J.-K. Huysmans from naturalism to decadence
• Against the Grain
• Huysmans Catholicism and later career
• conclusion decadence as a limited response to
  positivism

3
positivism central planks

• determinism
• imperialism
• minimalism
• triumphalism

4
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
5
naturalist theory experimental novel

• 1) prestige of science the scientific pathway
  the general evolution of the century (p. 33)
• 2) Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of
  Experimental Medicine (1865) extension of
  principles of natural science to living beings,
  showing possibility (in spite Bernards own
  views) of extension of science to art
• 3) determinism A like determinism will govern
  the stones of the roadway and the brain of man.
  There is an absolute determinism for all human
  phenomena.

6
theory contd

• 4) end of metaphysics no more deep questions
  how rather than why. The metaphysical man is
  dead our whole territory is transformed by the
  advent of the physiological man (p. 54).
• 5) novel as experiment framing of hypothesis,
  organization of experiment, observation of
  results
• 6) Rhetoric has no place here. To-day an
  exaggerated importance is given to form (p. 43).

7
theory contd

• 7) genius in organizing investigations of nature,
  not in imaginatively departing from nature
• 8) ultimate ideal mastery of causes and freedom
  to perfect humanity
• 9) causes to be sought in domains of inheritance
  and environment
• 10) novels as rooting out social disease One
  member becomes rotten, and immediately all
  around him are tainted, the social circulus is
  interrupted, the health of that society is
  compromised (p. 29).

8
practice

• Thérèse Raquin (1867)
• Les Rougon-Macquart (
• La Fortune des Rougon (1871) La Curée
  (187172) Le Ventre de Paris (1873) La Conquête
  de Plassans (1874) La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret
  (1875) Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
  L'Assommoir (1877) Une Page d'amour (1878) Nana
  (1880) Pot-Bouille (1882) Au Bonheur des Dames
  (1883) La Joie de vivre (1884) Germinal (1885)
  L'uvre (1886) La Terre (1887) Le Rêve (1888)
  La Bête humaine (1890) L'Argent (1891) La
  Débâcle (1892) Le Docteur Pascal (1893)
• Jaccuse (1898)

9
J.-K. Huysmans (1848-1907)
10
Huysmanss career

• naturalist period Marthe (1876), Les Surs
  Vatard (1879)
• decadent period A rebours (1884), Là-bas (1891)

11
the theory of practice

• 1) hatred of bourgeois civilization
• 2) bourgeoisie have in fact led civilization to
  decline rather than to progress
• 3) hatred of bourgeois positivism
• 4) critique of restricting art to reflection

12
theory of practice, contd

• 5) artifice and artificiality as a general
  alternative to nature and naturalism
• 6) but artifice which does not depart from but
  mocks or inverts the natural norm
• 7) Des Esseintes as an experimentalist

13
Catholicism and decadence
14
limits of decadence

• does it break with determinism?
• does it offer alternative to bourgeois life, or
  just screed against it?
• does it offer art as a genuine alternative, or
  simply a theoretical one?