Silent Film and U.S. Naturalist Literature

Focusing on the intersection of naturalism and early cinema, the book explores how these mediums challenged concepts of temporality and human freedom. It examines US naturalist novels that interrogate the relationship between individual agency and the relentless passage of time, while also analyzing early films that emerged from these literary experiments. The author highlights the preference for narrative progression over character development in both forms, linking this choice to broader social and aesthetic issues, including representation, historiography, and labor reform.