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Musset, Alfred de (1810–1857) poet, play-
wright
Best known for his poetry, Alfred de Musset was
inspired by Shakespeare and a love affair with
George
SAND. He can also be credited as having
written the first modern French dramas. Born in
Paris to a distinguished family, Musset graduated
with honors from Collège Henri IV and briefly
pursued a career in medicine before a dislike of
blood prompted him to first try painting and then,
ultimately, writing.
He published his first work, the ballad A Dream,
in 1828, which was followed a year later with his
first collection of poetry, Contes d’Espagne et d’I-
talie (1830). The collection gained him the favor of
Victor
HUGO and earned his acceptance into the
circle of ROMANTIC poets. In 1830, Musset was
asked to write for the stage, but his first play, La
Nuit vénitienne (A Venetian Night, 1830), was not
successful.
In 1833, Musset met and began a passionate af-
fair with poet George Sand. His autobiographical
piece, La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (Confes-
sion of a Child of the Century, 1835), details their
relationship. She abandoned him, however, after
falling in love with another man during a trip to
Venice. Returning to France alone and in despair,
Musset used his feelings to produce some of his
greatest theatrical works, including Lorenzaccio
(1834) and No Trifling With Love (1834). He has
been praised for his multidimensional female
characters and his in-depth understanding of love.
His works are commonly compared, in terms of
popularity in France, to those of
RACINE and
MOLIÈRE.
Poor health began to haunt Musset in the 1840s
in the form of a heart ailment that came to be re-
ferred to by scientists as Musset’s symptom. Aggra-
vated by excessive drinking and the depression
caused by several failed affairs, his health caused a
decline in his literary output. He spent the last two
years of his life confined to his apartment and died
on May 2.
Another Work by Alfred de Musset
Fantasio and Other Plays. Translated by Michael Fein-
gold. New York: Theatre Communications Group,
1993.
A Work about Alfred de Musset
Bishop, Lloyd. The Poetry of Alfred Musset: Styles and
Genres. New York: Lang, 1997.
308 Musset, Alfred de
309
N
Nabokov, Vladimir (1899–1977) novelist,
dramatist, literary critic, translator, poet
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born in St.
Petersburg, Russia, into a wealthy, aristocratic
family. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov,
was a prominent liberal politician; his mother,
Elena Ivanovna Nabokova, was a descendant of a
wealthy, noble family. Nabokov learned French
and English from various tutors and learned to
read and write English before his native Russian.
He described himself as “a perfectly normal trilin-
gual child in a family with a large library.”
Nabokov’s father served in the first Duma (the
parliamentary body of Russia) and later held a
post in the Provisional Government. After the
Communists took control of the government,
Nabokov’s family left Russia in 1919 and tem-
porarily settled in England. Nabokov’s mother
sold her jewels to finance his education at Trinity
College, Cambridge, which he attended from 1919
to 1922. Nabokov graduated with honors from
Cambridge, receiving a degree in Russian and
French. The Nabokov family then moved to
Berlin, Germany, when Nabokov’s father accepted
a position as the editor of the Russian newspaper.
Nabokov’s father was assassinated by right-wing
monarchists in 1922.
Between 1922 and 1923, Nabokov published
two collections of poetry and, in 1924, produced
his first play, The Tragedy of Mr. Morn. In 1925, he
married Vera Slonim. Although he worked in sev-
eral genres of literature, Nabokov particularly ex-
celled in fiction. In 1926, Mary, his first novel, was
published in Berlin; two years later, he published
his second novel King, Queen, Knave. Between
1929 and 1938, Nabokov published four novels
and a collection of short stories.
The year 1938 was crucial for Nabokov’s literary
career. After moving to France, Nabokov decided
he would try to write a novel in English; his first
such work was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
(1914), a “biography”of a fictional writer, narrated
by his brother.
In 1940, Nabokov emigrated to the United
States, narrowly escaping the advancing Nazi
troops. Between 1941 and 1959, Nabokov taught
creative writing, literature, and Russian at Wellesley
College, Stanford, Harvard, and Cornell. During
the 1940s, he published short stories in The New
Yorke r and a scholarly work on Nikolai
GOGOL.
During these years, Nabokov’s output of fiction was
relatively small, partly because he was still adjusting
to writing in English. In 1951, he published a mem-
oir, Conclusive Evidence.
Nabokov’s most famous novel, Lolita, was writ-
ten during the early 1950s and published in
France in 1955. The novel explores the psycho-
logical ramifications of a man’s love affair with his
12-year-old stepdaughter. Although a number of
critics immediately recognized the artistic virtues
of the novel, it was banned in France in 1956 for
its subject matter. When Lolita was finally pub-
lished in the United States, it remained on The
New York Times best-seller list for six months. The
novel was adapted into film by Stanley Kubrick in
1962 and again by Adrian Lyne in 1997. Lolita re-
mains one of the most powerful novels of 20th-
century American literature. As critic Charles
Rolo said in The Atlantic Monthly in 1958, Lolita is
“an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to
wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish
materials.”
In 1961, Nabokov moved to Montreux,
Switzerland, where he remained until his death in
1977. During the 1960s and 1970s, he continued
to write novels and translated his earlier works
from Russian to English. One of the main criti-
cisms of his work was its seeming lack of concern
for social issues. Nabokov did not refute such
criticism: “I have never been interested in what
is called the literature of social comment.” Indeed,
his work comments on the experience of the
individual, often exploring the character’s psy-
chological dimensions. “The true conflict is not
between the characters in the novel, but between
author and reader,” he maintained. By the time of
his death, Nabokov had established a worldwide
reputation as a great writer and scholar.
Other Works by Vladimir Nabokov
Ada. New York: Vintage Press, 1990.
Despair. New York: Vintage Press, 1989.
Pale Fire. New York: Vintage Press, 1989.
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. New
York: Vintage Press, 1989.
A Work about Vladimir Nabokov
Cornwell, Neil. Vladimir Nabokov. Plymouth, U.K.:
Northcote House Publishers, 1999.
Naidu, Sarojini (1879–1949) poet
Sarojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad, India, into
an extremely Westernized family, which gave her
the opportunity to pursue a lifestyle and education
uncommon to most women of her time. Naidu
wrote only in English and started writing poetry as
a young girl. She went to England in 1895 to study
at King’s College, London, and returned to India in
1898.
Naidu’s poetry was originally very well received
in England because it portrayed an India with
which Victorian England was familiar. Her poems
were romantic portrayals of an aesthetically ap-
pealing, nonpolitical India that was friendly to its
colonizers, the British, especially when Britain’s
rule was threatened.
As Naidu developed as a poet and became more
involved in the political activities of the Indian Na-
tional Congress Party, her poetry also changed. The
Golden Threshold (1905), for example, presents a
collage of poems about Indian life as seen through
the native eye. The poems focus strongly on the so-
cial conditions of the nation under colonial rule.
Because these poems were such a departure from
Naidu’s earlier works, which showed the influence
of great Western poets such as Wordsworth and
Keats, Naidu was called “the nightingale of India,”
an epithet given her by Mohandas GANDHI.
By her third and final collection of lyric verse,
Naidu was already beginning to spend less time
writing poetry and more time being actively in-
volved in politics. She was a close friend of Gandhi
and was often the only woman who would accom-
pany him on his many political marches and ral-
lies. Such involvement on her part also made her a
powerful figure for women’s causes. One of her
contributions was working to abolish purdah, a so-
cial rule that forced women to seclude themselves
inside homes and wear clothing that completely
covered their bodies.
Naidu dedicated her last volume, The Broken
Wing (1915–16), to India’s patriotic freedom fight-
ers. This work completed her transformation from
a poetess of remarkable Western education and ro-
mantic sensitivity to one whose only concern was
310 Naidu, Sarojini
to encourage the patriotic zealousness of her time.
She was the first Indian woman to become the
president of the Indian National Congress in 1925,
and in 1947, she was made governor of the state of
Uttar Pradesh.
Other Works by Sarojini Naidu
The Bird of Time; Songs of Life, Death and the Spring.
New York: J. Lane Company, 1916.
The Sceptred Flute: Songs of India. New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1923.
A Work about Sarojini Naidu
Naravane,Vishwanath S. Sarojini Naidu: An Introduc-
tion to Her Life, Work, and Poetry. New Delhi:
Orient Longman Ltd., 1996.
Naipaul, V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad)
(1932– ) novelist, travel writer, essayist
Born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, V. S. Naipaul is de-
scended from Hindu Indians. His grandfather
worked in a sugarcane plantation, and his father,
Seepersad, was a journalist and short-story writer.
As a child, Naipaul spent most of his time in the
matriarchal Tiwari clan house in Chaguanas or in
the streets of Port of Spain. He attended Queen’s
Royal College, Trinidad, and University College,
Oxford, where he studied English literature.
After graduation, Naipaul stayed in England
and worked for the BBC and the New Statesman, a
literary journal. Inspired by his father, Naipaul
began to write about his childhood experiences.
Multiple publications followed, and selections of
his published reviews and articles appear in The
Overcrowded Barracoon (1972) and The Return of
Eva Peron with The Killings in Trinidad (1980).
Western critics positively reviewed Naipaul’s
first novels, but others, especially those from the
Caribbean and developing countries, vehemently
criticized the treatment of colonial people in his
writings. His first three novels—The Mystic
Masseur (1957), The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and
Miguel Street (1957) which Naipaul wrote first but
published last—ironically and satirically portray
the absurdities of Trinidadian life while exploring
the lives of East Indian community members.
Critical Analysis
A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), Naipaul’s fourth
work, earned substantially more recognition than
his earlier novels. It focuses on Biswas, a sensitive
man who is loosely modeled after Naipaul’s father,
who struggles with displacement, disorder, and
alienation to establish his own identity. The hier-
archical relations in Biswas’s house symbolize and
comment on colonial relationships. Many of
Naipaul’s subsequent novels also explore themes of
alienation as his characters strive to integrate cul-
tural tensions, especially those between native and
Western-colonial traditions and influences.
The same year Naipaul published A House for
Mr. Biswas, he received a grant from the Trinidad
government to travel in the Caribbean. Extensive
travel followed in the 1960s and early 1970s. His
excursions to countries including Uganda, Ar-
gentina, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the United
States informed his writing. Mr. Stone and the
Knight’s Companion (1963), which takes place in
England, was Naipaul’s first novel set outside the
West Indian context.
More serious place-specific cultural studies re-
placed the more comedic aspects of Naipaul’s ear-
lier novels. The three short stories in In a Free State
(1971), which won the Booker Prize in 1971, take
place in different countries. Naipaul uses a novella
as well as travel-diary excerpts in these three stories
to explore individual and universal freedom. The
novel Guerrillas (1975) follows an uprising in the
Caribbean, and A Bend in the River (1979), which
has been compared to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, examines the future of a newly inde-
pendent state in Central Africa. The introspective
The Enigma of Arrival (1979) juxtaposes autobiog-
raphy and fiction to construct an almost anthro-
pological exploration of the life of a writer of
Caribbean origin living in rural England.
Although some praised Naipaul’s complex and
sometimes scathing cultural analyses of his jour-
neys as honest and visionary, others criticized
Naipaul, V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) 311
them as pessimistic portrayals of the developing
world, as seen in two of his travel books on India:
An Area of Darkness (1964) and India: A Wounded
Civilisation (1977). Other nonfiction works in-
clude the more widely accepted India: A Million
Mutinies Now (1990), The Middle Passage: Impres-
sions of Five Societies—British, French, and Dutch
—in the West Indies (1963), and Among the Believ-
ers: An Islamic Journey (1989), which critically as-
sesses Muslim fundamentalists in non-Arab
countries.
The Mimic Men, published in 1967, is consid-
ered by critics to be Naipaul’s best novel. It
traces the life of Ralph Singh, a politician in early
retirement who explains his own position:
“The career of the colonial politician is short and
ends brutally. We lack order. Above all, we lack
power, and we do not understand that we lack
power.” Set in the Caribbean island of Isabella
and in England, the novel has generated many
questions concerning authenticity, politics, and
psychology.
After the publication of The Loss of El Dorado
(1970), which describes Trinidad’s colonial history,
Naipaul returned to Trinidad. Dissatisfied, he went
to England and began to blur fictional boundaries.
As he wrote,“Fiction, which had once liberated me
and enlightened me, now seemed to be pushing
me toward being simpler than I really was.” He ex-
plained this concept further in Reading and Writ-
ing: a Personal Account (2000): “So, as my world
widened, beyond the immediate personal circum-
stances that bred fiction, and as my comprehen-
sion widened, the literary forms I practiced flowed
together and supported one another; and I could-
n’t say that one form was higher than another.” A
Way in the World (1994), for instance, which con-
tains nine thematically linked but segmented nar-
ratives, draws on the genres of fiction, history and
memoirs, and documentary to address personal
and sociopolitical issues.
Naipaul’s distinctive incorporation of multiple
genres in literary works has earned him the repu-
tation of formal innovator. Themes of alienation,
mistrust, and self-deception run through many of
his works, but his latter works tend to embrace
more than criticize.
In 1990, Naipaul, who has British citizenship,
was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. After being a
perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in litera-
ture, Naipaul received the award in 2001. To quote
Timothy F. Weiss, Naipaul,
through an autobiographical art, has tapped
experiences that have come to define aspects
of people’s lives in the colonial and postcolo-
nial word. Spanning several decades, his works
are about more than the problems of the de-
veloping world that are a deep concern run-
ning through every book; they are about a
rapidly changing world order and a changing
definition of home and belonging in that new
order.
Other Works by V. S. Naipaul
Between Father and Son: Family Letters. New York:
Vintage Books, 2001.
Half a Life. New York: Knopf, 2001.
“To a Young Writer.” New Yorker (June 26–July 3
1995).
Works about V. S. Naipaul
Gupta, Suman. V. S. Naipaul. Plymouth, U.K.: North-
cote House in Association with the British Coun-
cil, 1999.
Khan, Md. Akhtar Jamal. V. S. Naipaul: a Critical
Study. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1998.
King, Bruce. V. S. Naipaul. London: MacMillan, 1993.
Weiss, Timothy S. On the Margins: the Art of Exile in
V. S. Naipaul. Amherst: University of Massachu-
setts Press, 1992.
Narayan, R(asipuram) K(rishnaswamy)
(1906–2001) novelist, short-story writer
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, India. His fa-
ther was a teacher who was repositioned in various
South Indian states, which meant that Narayan
frequently changed schools. Though he was not a
model student, education was an important part of
312 Narayan, R(asipuram) K(rishnaswamy)
growing up in the Narayan household. Narayan
was the third of eight children; to relieve some of
the burden of bringing up so many children, his fa-
ther sent Narayan to live with his maternal grand-
mother in Madras.
Narayan has often claimed that listening to his
grandmother’s stories inspired his own love for
storytelling. Because writing was not considered a
worthwhile profession at the time, his family re-
ceived his decision to become a writer with shock
and dismay. The creative spirit is not exclusive to
R. K. Narayan in his family: His brother, R. K. Lax-
man, is one of India’s most famous and highly
published cartoonists and has illustrated several
of Narayan’s books. Like Laxman, Narayan depicts
India through the eyes of a character from an
“older” world, one that is detached from the mod-
ern world and is constantly bewildered by its
machinations.
Narayan proved to be resourceful through his
writing from the very beginning. While working
on his first book Swami and Friends (1935), he was
able to support himself by contributing short sto-
ries to magazines. This book first introduces
Narayan’s Malgudi village and its inhabitants. This
fictional world appears to be completely estranged
from the outside world, and its isolation clearly
brings out more clearly the emotional ties that
keep this village community together.
When Narayan began to write, he was one of
numerous writers who created a turning point in
Indian literature. For the first time, Indian writers
were writing only in English, and many of them
were writing for a national and international au-
dience. At a time when writing in English was con-
sidered politically incorrect and when Indian
politics were the most appropriate theme, Narayan
placed himself outside of these constraints. He
chose to use both English (the only language in
which he wrote) and India’s rural settings to cre-
ate a version of an Indian life that was relatively
free from colonial politics. One of his most popu-
lar works, Malgudi Days (1942), for instance, bor-
rows the Malgudi of Swami and Friends to explore
the effects of Western influence through human
relationships; it is also the name of a television se-
ries based on this collection of stories. The mythi-
cal village of Malgudi is set at the crossroads of an
old India meeting a new one. These stories cap-
ture the image of the ordinary person amid sim-
ple surroundings to suggest an organic shift from a
colonial India to an independent one. The central
characters in The English Teacher (1945) and his
story “Mithaiwalla” (“The Vendor of Sweets,”
1967) are heroes set in this same transition.
The story “Mithaiwalla” focuses on the conflict
that arises between a father and his son as they
must learn how to understand their changing re-
lationship without letting their differences create
an emotional rift. In The English Teacher, a
teacher’s moral struggle against a decadent form of
education is made more complicated by his grow-
ing responsibilities as a father. Also set in a small
town, this novel explores the links between per-
sonal and social relationships. Being a good
teacher, the protagonist learns, is contingent upon
his maturity as a father and husband. The darker
sides to Narayan’s fiction are, however, always
clothed in a humor that strives for frankness and
compassion rather than judgment.
Narayan’s novel The Guide (1958) won the
Sahitya Akademi Award (India’s highest literary
award) and was made into a Hindi movie of the
same name that has now become an Indian clas-
sic. It was the first Indian–English work to receive
the award. In addition to writing fiction, Narayan
interpreted and translated into English many of
India’s classic epics. His versions of The Mahab-
harata (1978) and The Ramayana (1972) made
these texts available to new readers both in and
outside India. Narayan is also known as the Grand
Old Man of Indian English fiction.
Narayan won the Padma Bhushan (given in
recognition of contributions to the nation) in
1964. In 1980, he was awarded the A. C. Benson
Award by the Royal Society of Literature and made
an Honorary Member of the American Academy
Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1986, he joined In-
dian politics and became a member of Parliament;
he was awarded this post for his contribution as
Narayan, R(asipuram) K(rishnaswamy) 313
an outstanding litterateur and held the position for
six years.
Other Works by R. K. Narayan
The Financial Expert. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
My Days: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
A Work about R. K. Narayan
Kain, Geoffrey R., ed. R. K. Narayan: Contemporary
Critical Perspectives. East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1993.
Natsume Kinosuke
See NATSUME S ¯OSEKI.
Natsume S¯oseki (Natsume Kinosuke)
(1867–1916) novelist, short-story writer,
essayist
Natsume S¯oseki was born Natsume Kinosuke in
Tokyo, Japan. He was adopted shortly after his birth
but was returned to his family home at age nine.
While still very young, he studied Chinese literature
and haiku, venturing into English literature at
Tokyo Imperial University. After graduation, he
began to teach in public schools. A turning point
came in 1900 when the government sent him to
England to continue his study of English literature.
When he returned, he became a lecturer at Tokyo
Imperial University. However, he soon resigned his
teaching position to take up writing full time for
the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper in 1907. He died
nine years later from a stomach ulcer.
Shortly after returning from England, Natsume
began his career with the comic novel I Am a Cat
(1905). The story portrays the antics of a cat that
lives with a teacher, indirectly revealing the rela-
tionship of the teacher and his wife. Within the
next two years, he produced a number of short sto-
ries and novels, including a perennial favorite of
Japanese students called Botchan (1906). In this
novel, Natsume created a lovably bumbling pro-
tagonist who faces a series of awkward situations.
Toward the end of his life, Natsume wrote what has
become one of the most recognized novels of
Japanese literature, Kokoro (1914). This psycholog-
ical novel took up the issue of individualism in a
country in the throes of modernization.
Natsume is considered, along with Ogai MORI,
to be the father of MODERNISM in Japanese litera-
ture, largely because of his effective portrayal of
intellectuals at the turn of the century. Natsume’s
early writing was by and large satirical, but as he
began to address issues such as alienation and
morality, he adopted a more serious and often
pessimistic tone.
Other Works by Natsume S¯oseki
Botchan. Translated by Alan Turney. Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1992.
Grass on the Wayside. Translated by Edwin McClellan.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969.
The Miner. Translated by Jay Rubin. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1988.
The Wayfarer. Translated by Beongcheon Yu. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1967.
Works about Natsume S¯oseki
Doi, Takeo. The Psychological World of Natsume
S¯oseki. Translated by William Jefferson Tyler.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1976.
Iijima, Takehisa, and James M.Vardaman Jr., eds. The
World of Natsume S¯oseki. Tokyo: Kinseido Ltd.,
1987.
naturalism (1860–1900)
Naturalism is perhaps best described as a literary
movement in which writers attempted to be true to
reality, accurate in their representation of life, and
methodical and nonjudgmental in their observa-
tions of the various phenomena of life. The French
writer Émile ZOLA first used the term naturalism to
explain the application of elements of the scientific
method to the examination of all aspects of life. In
his essay Le Roman expérimental (1880), Zola
wrote that the novelist should approach the craft
314 Natsume Kinosuke
of writing in the same manner as the scientist ap-
proaches the study of nature.
Proponents of naturalism believe that both
hereditary and environmental influences combine
to determine human behavior. For a writer to de-
pict life as it really is, the ultimate goal of natural-
ist literature, he or she must present characters
whose motivations can be clearly understood
based on the surrounding causes. In other words,
Zola and those who followed him replaced the
classical idea of fate as the major factor behind
human circumstances with the more scientific
concept of determinism in which human beings
are responsible for their own actions. Thus, some,
if not all, human values can be seen to proceed in
direct relationship to situational needs such as
food, water, and shelter, placed in combination
with environmental, sociological and psychologi-
cal factors. The literature of the naturalist school,
therefore, dealt more commonly with the obser-
vation of reality as it actually presents itself than
with the construction of elaborate fantasies.
Naturalism in literature developed as a direct
response to ROMANTICISM. Dissatisfaction with the
representations of social conditions in literature
led to a desire on the part of certain writers to
create a body of work that stood in more direct
correlation to actual life. Romanticism focused
on high lyricism and was concerned with the
beauty of language and self-expression, human
emotions and personal values. Naturalism, on the
other hand, was more concerned with cause-and-
effect relationships and logical outcomes to given
circumstances. This trend was not entirely new;
Realism had anticipated some of these concerns.
However, naturalism was also a reaction to
REALISM. The naturalists believed that realist liter-
ature, while it sought to portray life accurately,
was not a true representation of the harsh reali-
ties faced by the lower social classes. Whereas the
realists displayed a tendency within their work to
aestheticize societal problems, making them more
palatable to the bourgeois readership, naturalists
developed more accurate portrayals of reality,
making no attempt to pass judgment or to
suggest a solution. They abandoned religion and
philosophy, believing neither discipline capable
of effecting change on society. Instead, they be-
lieved that literature had the power to create
change simply by making the reader aware of the
extent of the problem.
Common, therefore, among naturalist works is
the emphasis on characters who are poor, undere-
ducated, and trapped in lives filled with filth and
corruption. These are the people whose lives are
most controlled by social and cultural influences
and whose decisions are most affected by the ful-
fillment of basic needs. As a result, much natural-
ist literature is a dreary representation of the harsh
realities of life. Although similar to realism in
many ways, naturalism goes beyond realism in its
belief that social and biological factors take the
place of free will entirely, as can be witnessed in the
trappings of lower-class existence.
In addition to Zola, other noted French natu-
ralists include the
GONCOURT brothers, J. K. HUYS-
MANS, and Guy de MAUPASSANT. The Goncourts’
works, such as Soeur Philomène (1861) and Renée
Mauperin (1864; translated 1887) were based
largely on notes from their travels and presented
an accurate vision of life as they observed it. Prior
to his absorption in DECADENCE, Huysmans’s early
works, such as Marthe (1876), can also be classified
as naturalist pieces.
In the theater, the naturalist movement is
most closely associated with the Théâtre Libre
movement of the late 19th century. Again, the goal
of drama, like that of literature, became the desire
to represent life as accurately as possible. By plac-
ing a greater degree of emphasis on scenic design,
which was realistically detailed, and costume
design, which reflected the style and quality of
the characters, as well as the development and
encouragement of more natural acting methods,
the movement was an attempt to break free from
the conventions of artificial theatricality prevalent
in the past.
The naturalist movement in France did not
confine itself to one art form but existed in
theatrical performances and the visual arts as
naturalism 315
well. Neither was the movement restricted to
France. Similar movements occurred in the latter
part of the 19th century throughout Europe and in
America.
Works about Naturalism
Baguley, David. Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic
Vision. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990.
Bronson, Catharine Savage, ed. Nineteenth Century
French Fiction Writers: Naturalism and Beyond,
1860–1900. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman,
1992.
Nelson, Brian, ed. Naturalism in the European Novel:
New Critical Perspectives. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1992.
Pagano, Tullio. Experimental Fictions: From Émile
Zola’s Naturalism to Giovanni Verga’s Verism.
Madison, Wisc.: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1999.
Naubert, Benedikte (1756–1819) novelist,
writer of fairy tales
Born into an academic family in Leipzig, Germany,
Benedikte Naubert received an education unusual
for a woman of her time. She was one of the most
prolific and widely read authors of her age: Her pub-
lications—family novels, historical novels, and fairy
tales—extend to 80 titles. Because of prejudice
against women writers, she chose to publish anony-
mously. She influenced the historical novels of Sir
Walter Scott and was appreciated by the romantics.
The stories in Naubert’s Neue Volksmarchen der
Deutschen (1789–92), based on folktales, were origi-
nal in combining the fantastic with the everyday and
giving a voice to female narrators and protagonists.
The brothers
GRIMM were indebted to her, but their
tales told a very different story about the ideal rise of
women in the emerging bourgeois family. A few of
her novels were translated into English during her
lifetime, and one of her most interesting stories, Der
Kurze Mantel, has more recently been translated as
“The Cloak”in Bitter Healing: German Women Writ-
ers: 1700–1830 (Blackwell and Zantop, eds., 1990).
Ndebele, Njabulo (1948– ) novelist
Njabulo Ndebele was born in Western Native
Township near Johannesburg, South Africa. His fa-
ther, a Zulu, was a schoolteacher who later became
an inspector of schools, and his mother, a Swazi,
was a nurse. Ndebele’s mixed parentage has an im-
portant influence on his perception of what it
means to be African, which is revealed in his
works. Ndebele moved with his family to a small
mining town in Charterston Location in 1954
where he completed his primary-school education.
Because Ndebele’s parents did not think the
apartheid South African government would allow
Ndebele to exploit his intellect, they sent him to
black-ruled Swaziland to attend high school. He
went to Cambridge University for two years for his
master’s degree and taught briefly at the University
of Lesotho before going on to the University of
Denver for his Ph.D. In 1983, Ndebele returned to
Africa where he filled several administrative
and teaching positions before finally settling as
vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town in
September 2000.
Ndebele’s most significant contribution to
world literature is his desire to bring African liter-
ature out of its protest mood. In a series of arti-
cles, he questioned the conventional African
approach to writing, which challenged white colo-
nials’ domination by appealing to their guilt. The
most influential of these articles was “New South-
African Literature or the Rediscovery of the Ordi-
nary,” published in South African Literature and
Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary (1991). Nde-
bele believes that African writers should write for
their fellow African readers, appealing to an
African collective consciousness and heritage.
African literature should not merely attack
apartheid or oppression but should find a com-
mon ground where all Africans can express their
values.
Ndebele’s stories depict his various attempts to
search for African values and to promote them as
the essence of African identity that transcends all
differences. In the short story, “Uncle” (1983), for
example, the character Lovington teaches his
316 Naubert, Benedikte
nephew to recognize a new “map” of South Africa,
drawn using traditional South African values, not
colonial European laws. Within this framework,
Ndebele also celebrates Africa’s past by remem-
bering heroic figures, such as King Moshoeshoe. In
another short story, “The Music of the Violin”
(1983), Ndebele presents music as a mock battle-
ground where the indiscriminate adoption of
Western culture is criticized by a child who sees the
contradiction more clearly than his anglophile
parents.
Ndebele’s attempts to address the multidi-
mensional aspects of colonialism on South
Africa represent a refreshing approach to the dif-
ferent facets of colonialism that have been pre-
sented by past African writers as one
dimensional. Perhaps the most remarkable con-
tribution Ndebele makes to the literary world is
his poignant and vivid description of the daily
lives of ordinary Africans. By concentrating on
daily struggles of ordinary people for survival
rather than the sensational power struggles de-
veloping at the higher levels, Ndebele is able to
show that little defeats and victories take place
in spite of the larger nationalistic struggle. The
true hero in Ndebele’s mind is the ordinary per-
son who, through diligence and resourcefulness,
continues to survive.
Ndebele has won various writing awards in-
cluding the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa,
the SANLAM First Prize for outstanding fiction,
and the Pringle and Mofolo–Plomer Awards. He
published a novel, The Cry of Winnie Mandela, in
2003.
Other Works by Njabulo Ndebele
Bonolo and the Peach Tree. New York: Manchester
University Press, 1992.
Death of a Son. Johannesburg: Viva, 1996.
Fools and Other Stories. London: Reader’s Interna-
tional, 1986.
Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Essays on South African
Literature and Culture. Johannesburg: Congress
of South African Writers, 1991.
Sarah, Rings and I. Johannesburg: Viva, 1993.
Works about Njabulo Ndebele
Shava, Piniel. A People’s Voice: Black South African
Writing in the Twentieth Century. London: Zed
Books, 1989.
Trump, Martin. Rendering Things Visible: Essays on
South African Literary Culture. Athens: Ohio Uni-
versity Press, 1990.
Necker, Anna Louise Germaine
See STAËL, GERMAINE DE.
négritude
In the early 1930s, French-speaking African and
Caribbean writers living in Paris started the liter-
ary and ideological négritude movement with the
leadership of poet Aimé
CÉSAIRE from Martinique,
poet Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana,
and poet and later president of Senegal (1960–80)
Léopold Sédar
SENGHOR. Inspired by Harlem
Renaissance writers in the United States, such
as W. E. B. DuBois and Langston Hughes, and
West Indian thinkers and poets, such as Jacques
Roumain, René Maran, and Jean Price-Mars, black
intellectuals began to examine critically Western
values to reassess black cultural value and identity.
The publication of Légitime Défense (Legitimate
Defense) in the early 1930s, a journal with a strong
Marxist and anticolonial bent, prompted Senghor,
Damas, and Césaire to print L’Étudiant noir (The
black student) in 1934 “for all black students, re-
gardless of origin, African, Antillean or American.”
According to Damas, the word négritude first ap-
peared in an editorial by Césaire in L’Étudiant noir.
For Césaire in his long poem, Cahier d’un retour au
pays natal (Return to My Native Land, 1939), négri-
tude originated in “Haiti, where Négritude first
stood up and swore by its humanity.” The term
gained popularity after appearing in Césaire’s
poem, but some say the spirit of négritude was first
expressed poetically by Damas in Pigments (1937).
After World War II, the group founded Présence
Africaine, a publishing house and journal edited by
Alioue Diop. One year later, Senghor’s Anthologie
négritude 317