ZOLA is the fountainhead of naturalism, in a double and
possibly a triple sense. He is a source of naturalistic theory, he is a
model for many novelists, and he is to a lesser degree a source of
critical method in the interpretation of fiction. I shall begin with
the theory, proceed to consider the extent to which the theory con-
trols the structure of his novels, and conclude with a glance at
Zola's criticism of his own and other naturalists' writings. The
discrepancies between the theory and the practice have a double
interest in that they are an important source of the variety and
complexity of American naturalism, and show how impossible it is
to reduce naturalism to any single formula. We shall also find
that an examination of Zola's work brings us to more elementary
problems than those presented in Chapter I.

The ideas which led to Zola's "experimental novel," as he termed
it, grew from contemporary scientific practices as well as from the
philosophy of positivism which inspired and directed them. Zola
was convinced that science at its best and most useful is research
science. Observation and recording of facts appeared to him to be
of relatively small value; in order to discover fundamental truths,
the scientist must arrange and observe his data so as to conduct
experiments under perfectly controlled conditions. By such pro-
cedures the researcher could discover exactly how certain phe-

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