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The Genealogical Novel, A New Genre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

A. E. Zucker
A. E. Zucker*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

As a direct result of the widespread discussion of Evolution during the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the new interest aroused in the doctrine of heredity, there appeared toward the end of the century a new genre of the novel. The genealogical novel is in itself an interesting phenomenon, marking the introduction of a new type of fiction ruled by science. Additional interest is given to the investigation through the remarkable circumstance that this new type of novel was projected contemporaneously and independently by two writers, Emile Zola and Samuel Butler, one in France and one in England.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , June 1928 , pp. 551 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

1 John F. Harris, Samuel Butler, London 1916, p. 58.

2 Harris, op. cit., p. 220 f.

3 Lanson, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris, 1918, pp. 1078 ff.

4 K. Sherard, Emile Zola, London, 1893, pp. 84 ff.

5 From Zola's Ebauches, quoted in Lemm, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Zolas Rougon-Macquart, p. 7.

6 Le Docteur Pascal, Paris, 1893, p. 38. For the hero of a “naturalistic” novel this country doctor seems to be drawn on rather “heroic” lines!

7 Sherard, op. cit., p. 93.

8 Lanson, op. cit., p. 1078 f.

9 Quoted by Sherard, op. cit., p. 84.

10 Life and Habit, p. 299.

11 The Way of All Flesh, Dent ed., p. 312.

12 Rose Macauley, Told by An Idiot, London, 1923, pp. 13, 18, 246.

13 For this reason some English critics have honored Thomas Mann with the title “The German Galsworthy.” For Galsworthy's relation to Hauptmann see Trumbauer, Hauptmann and Galsworthy, A Parallel, University of Pennsylvania Dissertation, 1917.

14 The Nuptial Flight, pp. 27, 211.

15 Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi Maxim Gorky, Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, Paradise Road, Richmond, 1920, p. 65.

16 Decadence, tr. by Veronica Dewey, 1927, p. 311.

17 There is also a good drama constructed on similar lines, Milestones (1912), by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch. Three generations figure in this drama whose three acts are dated 1860, 1885, and 1912.