The naturalistic tendency in contemporary Soviet fiction

thematics, poetics, functions

Konstantin Kustanovich

pp. 75-88

in: Sheelagh Duffin Graham (ed), New directions in Soviet literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1992

Abstract

Usually literature is referred to as naturalistic when it allegedly strives to show life as it is, including its most repulsive and cruel aspects. Often these aspects become dominant elements of the naturalistic narrative. Like the Russian writers of the 1840s and 1850s belonging to the Natural School, the French writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, for example, Zola and the Goncourt brothers, or such American authors as Stephen Crane (primarily his Maggie: A Girl of the Streets), Jack London and James Farrell, the contemporary Soviet writers under consideration here describe such social ills as alcoholism, use of drugs, prostitution, child abuse and the abuse of old people, indiscriminate sexual relations and sex involving children, families falling apart, deterioration of all traditional social institutions, extreme selfishness, crime, senseless cruelty, homelessness, starvation, terrible conditions in hospitals and schools, and other horrors — in a word, the authors present a detailed picture of utterly immoral social relations.

Cited authors

Farr James