The Experimental Novel

…book Le Roman expérimental (1880; The Experimental Novel) and has been occasionally held (though not practiced) by painters reacting against Romanticism, such as the 19th-century French artist Gustave Courbet. Zola advocated a novel that resembled a scientific investigation into reality. Plot was to be of no importance, rather an aspect…

…“Le Roman expérimental” (1880; “The Experimental Novel”), in which he developed a parallel between the methods of the novelist and those of the experimental scientist. An examination of the views held in common by Zola, Maupassant (in, for example, “Le Roman,” the introductory text to his novel Pierre et…

…including Le Roman expérimental (1880; The Experimental Novel) and Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881; The Naturalist Novelists). Naturalism involves the application to literature of two scientific principles: determinism, or the belief that character, temperament, and, ultimately, behaviour are determined by the forces of heredity, environment, and historical moment; and the experimental…