| | French Literature - 19th Century |
 | | Poetry completely recovered its elan, while the novel, as the most suitable genre for registering the social upheavals brought first by the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars and then by the expansion of capitalism and the industrial revolution, ultimately became the dominant mode of expression. |
 | | His 20-volume fictional examination of every level of social life during the Second Empire, Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-93), with its emphasis on the sordid and the depressing, remains the outstanding exemplar of NATURALISM whose influence as a movement it spanned. |
 | | Simultaneously, the philosopher and historian Hippolyte Taine, seeking a scientific explanation for historical and cultural phenomena, professed to discover in the interplay of physical and psychological factors the cause of national and individual variations. |
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