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WHAT IS HOWELLSIAN NATURE? AN EXAMINATION OF CRITICISM AND FICTION AND A MODERN INSTANCE

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Abstract (2. Language): 
Spearheading the „realism‟ movement in American literature toward the end of the nineteenth century, William Dean Howells both in his critical documents and essays—Criticism and Fiction—and fiction such as A Modern Instance gently chastises naturalists writers such as Frank Norris for their focus on force that controls man and determines his life. Howells would not have this one-sided belief in and examination of nature. Neither the struggle and survival nor the bestiality—the two facets of Nature of the naturalists—is the whole truth of what nature is, according to Howells. Moreover Howells rejects the romantic celebration of a single passion, the passion of love. To Howells the „romantic‟ approach is both unethical and unbeautiful, while the study of nature by the naturalists “leaves beauty out.” Howells believes that the novelist ought to study the common man and common things in nature. He embraces within the fold of his definition of nature the ethical elements and moral judgment as well. He rejects the ugly aspects of Darwinian nature but accepts smilingly the smiling and beautiful traits. Howellsian conception of nature is not a single ray of light, but it is like a spectrum. It is perhaps an amalgam of the philosophy of Emerson, Wordsworth‟s view of nature as a moral instructor, Elizabethan attitude of order, Swedenborgian belief in a moral governor of the universe, Keatsian conviction of beauty; all this on the spiritual, moral, and aesthetic levels. As regards human nature, which is another facet of Howells‟ concept of nature as a whole, Howells seems to be in line with Alexander Pope‟s dictum that “proper study of mankind is man;‟ and in fiction man can be studied as a character. The inter-relationship of man—human nature—and nature—the universe—is yet another side of Howellsian „nature.‟
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