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When Frank Norris died in 1902 at the age of 32, he had already written several novels and short stories and had made a name for himself as one of the leading American figures in the Naturalist movement. And rightly so: against the grand backgrounds of Californian valleys, deserts, and cities, Norris’s characters fight epic battles against larger-than-life opponents, intangible corporate monopolies, but especially against their own instincts and obsessions. In this seminar we will not only read The Octopus (1901), perhaps Norris’s most famous novel, but also earlier works such as McTeague (1899) or the posthumously published Vandover and the Brute (1914). Together with his critical writings, particularly his essays on French naturalistic writer Emile Zola, this will give us deeper insight into Norris’s particular brand of literary naturalism. Examining some of the early filmic adaptations of his novels, in turn – D.W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909) or Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924), for example – will provide us with an idea of the popular reception of Norris. |
