Excerpt from Naturalism in the Recent German Drama: With Special Reference to Gerhart Hauptmann Gerhart Hauptmann is regarded to-day as one of the foremost living dramatis. As is generally known, he has been carried along by the naturalistic movement which began to invade Germany in the beginning of the eighties of the nineteenth century, after it had already been at work for some fifteen or twenty years in France and Russia and had also penetrated Scandinavia. What is naturalism? As the word is often used interchangeably with realism, not a little confusion has arisen. The Greeks, Shakspere, and Goethe were realists. Were they therefore naturalists in the modern sense? To answer this question we must first find what is meant by "nature" in the word "naturalism." Friedrich Kirchner has pointed out the different significations of "nature" in this connection. "Nature" may first be conceived as in contrast with culture. The latter had in the eighteenth century, for instance, estranged man from nature to such a degree that men like Rousseau and Schiller gave vent to their feeling in the cry: Let us return to nature! This "Naturschwarmerei," however, is not the essential characteristic of modern naturalism. A second contrast exists between nature and character. Man should live in harmony with nature. The laws of ethics should be in harmony with the inevitable laws of nature, since man is evidently a link in the chain of natural phenomena and since the laws of our reason agree with the laws of nature. "Nature" in this case is after all an abstraction created by the human mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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First book in English devoted to Johannes Schlaf, the 19th-century German playwright, bringing fresh insights to the whole movement of German naturalist drama. This is the first book in English on the German playwright Johannes Schlaf (1862-1941), whose involvement in 'consistent realism' and modern theatre in the 1890s provides an insight into the origins and development of German naturalist drama. Schlaf's main contributions to this movement were with Die Familie Selicke (1890), on which he collaborated with Arno Holz, and Meister Oelze (1892), works which show his innovative talents. The author considers these works in the context of the experimental prose sketches which Schlaf worked on with Holz after 1888, and of the realist and naturalist dramas of Hebbel, Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Sudermann; he brings out their growing concern with trapped women and victimised children, as well as their critical focus on the problems of traditional poetry.

What was German Naturalism? What were its achievements? How does it compare with its counterparts in other European countries? These are some of the difficult questions addressed by John Osborne in Gerhart Hauptmann and the Naturalist Drama, a revised and updated version of his The Naturalist Drama in Germany, now widely acknowledged as the standard introduction to the subject. The debates to which he contributed, and in some cases initiated, on Naturalism in the German theatre, Naturalist theory in Germany, and the development of the Naturalist movement to the contemporary Social Democrat movement, have remained central issues. This revised edition preserves the structure and approach of the original, including its emphasis on the early dramas of Hauptmann, while taking full account of subsequent scholarship which provides the context in which this Naturalist playwright's work can be placed.

Gerhart Hauptmann's relationship to Naturalism has repeatedly been a subject of controversy. To clarify his position, this study analyses both published and unpublished opinions of his contemporaries within Naturalism. Following an outline of Naturalism based on the authors' own views of the often conflicting concepts related to the movement, emphasis is placed upon Naturalist critical response to Hauptmann's early works and upon the works of other Naturalist dramatists in relation to Hauptmann, underlining the authors' dependence upon his dramas as a model for literary success.

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