Naturalism and Expressionism: Points of Intersection at the Stylistic Level (Based on Émile Zola’s Novel “Germinal”)

Abstract

In contemporary literary studies, the problem of stylistic interaction remains insufficiently explored, in particular the issue of genetic and typological connections between naturalism and expressionism – artistic phenomena founded on diametrically opposed philosophical and aesthetic concepts. The aim of this study is to analyze a naturalist text through the lens of features that later became fundamental to the aesthetics and poetics of expressionism. The material of the research is Émile Zola’s novel “Germinal”.

Methodology. In pursuing this aim, the primary method employed was stylistic analysis of the literary text. Additionally, typological-comparative, genetic-contact, thematological, cultural-historical, and narratological methods were applied, along with methodological tools from the theory of liminality. The theoretical basis consists of: the theory of French realism and naturalism, Ivan Franko’s theory of “scientific realism,” the theory of German expressionism, the theory of liminality, and scholarly works by Ukrainian literary critics dedicated to the conceptualization of literary style as a scholarly problem, as well as realism, naturalism, and expressionism as artistic phenomena.

The results of the research. The article provides a stylistic analysis of Germinal through the prism of naturalist and expressionist features, drawing conclusions about the specifics of their interaction at the poetic-stylistic level and identifying the origins of their affinity. The analysis focuses primarily on the landscape (spatial descriptions) as a structural element of the literary text that is particularly indicative of style. In the context of clarifying the aesthetics and poetics of expressionism, the works of German and Ukrainian expressionists are brought into focus, and the poetry of Émile Verhaeren – a Belgian writer whose creative legacy represents an early stage in the development of European expressionism – is analyzed. The artistic texts of Verhaeren and Zola are compared. Attention is also paid to similarities and differences between realism and naturalism.

Conclusions. Naturalism is a liminal artistic phenomenon formed in the transitional space between the era of realism and the age of modernism: it crowned the positivist aesthetic-poetic system and provided the foundation for the emergence and consolidation of expressionism within the modernist paradigm. Naturalism and expressionism are genetically and typologically related, since both naturalists and expressionists are oriented toward society: the former focus on historically determined and localized social processes, while the latter address global, universal issues and patterns in the development of human civilization. The world, as perceived by both the naturalist and the expressionist, is a space of suffering, death, pain, trials, and fear; thus, both feature many shared themes and motifs (social cataclysms such as war, revolution, strike; instincts and drives, corporeality, extreme physiological and psychological states, etc.), for which the expressionist system of imagery – particularly allegory, gradation, contrast, and hyperbole – proves especially suitable. The degree of conceptualization of these images differs between naturalist and expressionist texts: in naturalism, emotion (and thus expressionist imagery) is subordinated to positivist aesthetics, whereas in expressionism it dominates and subordinates all possible poetic elements, including naturalistic ones. Émile Zola was a naturalist artist who sensed and, as far as possible, employed the power of emotional writing – a potential that would later be fully realized by the expressionists.