An Analysis of Naturalistic Elements in the Novels Radubis by Naguib Mahfouz and La Curée (The Share of Hunting Dogs) by Emil Zola

Because of its high resemblance to realism, naturalism has been regarded as an extreme form of realism that interprets all events in nature within the framework of the natural sciences. This school focuses on the inherited characteristics of the environment and reflections of the real life far from idealism; it also draws ugly, immoral, and corrupted details about the environment. Radubis, a work of Naguib Mahfouz, the famous contemporary Egyptian author, is a historical-social novel in which traces of realism, naturalism can be traced. La Curée (The share of hunting dogs) by Emil Zola, the most famous author of French naturalism, is also a historicalsocial novel that demonstrates the real historical events of the communist environment in a naturalistic style. Due to the common theme in these two books, this study aims to investigate them in terms of some traces of naturalism in the context of comparative literature through a descriptiveanalytical method. The findings suggest that the characters of the novel in ‘Radubis”, are the rulers and politicians in Egypt, and the characters in “La curée” are parvenu/ nouveau riche of the Second French Empire. The heroes of the stories have particular prominence that the authors do not insist on writing about them. Naguib speaks of the real events of the social environment such as the history of contemporary Egypt and its issues, moral corruption in the royal palaces, prostitution, etc., and criticizes the authoritarian rulers. On the other hand, Zola demonstrates the ugliness and immorality of aristocratic families during the Second French Empire, in line with the school of naturalism. Both novels represent many commonalities such as inheritance, physiological science, love as a physical force, morality and ugliness, among others.