The great naturalist tradition: Reading naturalism back into the nineteenth century British novel

The dissertation argues that naturalism, a late nineteenth century literary movement traditionally associated with the application of principles of scientific determinism to literature, can no longer be defined as only a pessimistic and cynical interlude in literary history, but must be understood as an integral part of literature's aesthetic continuum, rooted in the romantic movement and maturing ineluctably as realism and modernism. Naturalism clearly is evident in the novels of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, and appears much earlier in the century than has been generally accepted.; Using primary texts ranging from George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859) to James Joyce's iconic Ulysses (1922), the dissertation argues that naturalistic ideas of the novel as laboratory and introspective mirror begin long before the popular movement historically identified with Emile Zola and his sequence of naturalistic novels known as Rougon-Macquart. First the dissertation discusses aesthetics of realism as practiced by George Eliot and the influences on her work of particular scientific discoveries of the period, especially Darwin's theories of natural selection. Next, the project examines selected novels of Thomas Hardy, arguing that Hardy's cosmic vision of realism and naturalism is less a dark expression of hopelessness and pessimism than a result of the novelist's empirical inquiry and discovery of how one converging narrative illuminates another within a protean Victorian world. Finally, the dissertation reveals the powerful influence of naturalism in the work of James Joyce, particularly in the novel Ulysses and emphatically in the final interior monologue known as the "Penelope" episode.