Fighting Words offers an entirely new understanding of what literary naturalism is and why it matters.Ira Wells, countering the standard narrative of literary naturalism s much-touted concern with environmental and philosophical determinism, draws attention to the polemical essence of the genre and demonstrates how literary naturalists engaged instead with explosive political and cultural issues that remain fervently debated today. Naturalist writers, Wells argues in Fighting Words, are united less by a coherent philosophy than by an attitude, a posture of aggressive...