Commonalities of Literary Naturalism and Artistic Impressionism

The relation of literature with other arts is very old; however, comparatists have become interested in interdisciplinary studies specially since the last decades of the 20th century. In this article, the author has chosen a literary opus and a painting artwork to reveal the commonalities between them. For this purpose, there is a discussion from the viewpoint of French theorists between a naturalistic novel of the19th century, Assommoir by Zola, and a painting of the same time, "Women Ironing", by the impressionist artist, Edgar Degas.