Realism and Naturalism : The Novel in an Age of Transition

In this illuminating, comprehensive intellectual and literary history of the major American, British, and Continental novels of realism and naturalism from 1850 to 1950, Richard Lehan offers readers a new way of reading these works - moving outward from the text to forms of historical representation.

He argues that literary naturalism is a narrative mode that creates its own reality separate from that of other narrative modes.

Employing this strategy allows and encourages intertextuality - one novel talking or responding to another - for example, Zola's Nana to Dreiser's Sister Carrie or Zola's L'Assomoir to Sinclair's The Jungle.