Frank Norris's definition of naturalism is important because an understanding of his use of the term may help to explain both his own practice of fiction and the more general American reaction to Zolaesque literary principles. My reason for reintroducing the much- debated question of Norris's definition is that I believe new light can be shed on the subject by the examination of not only his well- known “A Plea for Romantic Fiction,” but also his less known “Zola as a Romantic Writer” and his relatively unknown “Weekly Letter” in the Chicago American of August 3, 1901.

Norris placed realism, romanticism and naturalism in a dialectic, in which realism and romanticism were opposing forces and naturalism was transcending synthesis. Realism, to Norris, was the literature of the normal and representative, “the smaller details of every- day life, things that are likely to happen between lunch and supper.” Moreover, realism does not probe the inner reaches of life; it “notes only the surface of things.” Howells is Norris's archetype of the realistic writer. Romanticism differs from realism both in its concern for “variations from the type of normal life,” and in its desire to penetrate beneath the surface of experience and derive large generalizations on the nature of life. Romanticism explores “the unplumbed depths of the human heart, and the mystery of sex, and the problems of life, and the black, unsearched penetralia of the soul of man.” To Norris “the greatest of all modern romanticists” is Hugo.

Now what of naturalism? Although Norris at times called Zola a romanticist, it is clear that he intended in that designation to emphasize Zola's lack of affinity to Howellsian realism rather than to eliminate naturalism as a distinctive descriptive term. Naturalism, as conceived by Norris, resolved the conflict between realism and romanticism by selecting the best from these two modes and by adding one constituent ignored by both. In his “Weekly Letter” to the Chicago American of August 3, 1901, he partially described this synthesis. He began with a distinction between Accuracy and Truth. Accuracy is a fidelity to particular detail; Truth is fidelity to the generalization applicable to a large body of experience. Since a novel may therefore be accurate in its depiction of a segment of life and yet be untrue, Norris inquired, what is the source of truth in fiction if a literal transcription of life itself is inadequate?