Realism in America

(1860-1914)

Realism - a literary doctrine that called for reality and truth in the depiction of ordinary life.

The main characteristic features:

ü came from Europe;

ü was shaped by the Civil War and the teachings of Ch. Darwin.

ü The dialects, customs, sights and sounds of regional America were observable;

ü a new generation of writers appeared- naturalists.

A host of new writers appeared:

ü Bret Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Henry James, Steven Crane, Jack London, Mark Twain, Theodor Dreiser:

a) their background and training were middle- class and journalistic;

b) were influenced by Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy;

c) tried to portray the American life as it really was.

Bret Harte

ü the first writer of local color to achieve wide popularity;

ü presented stories about western mining towns involving colorful gamblers, outlaws and scandalous women.

H. Beecher Stowe. Kate Chopin, Mark Twain

ü provided regional stories and tales of the lives of America’ s Westerners, Southerners, Easterners.

Darwinism:

ü stressed the animality of man;

ü suggested the people were dominated by irresistible forces of evolution.

Naturalism- a new and harsher realism.

ü reached its peak of popularity in the 1880’s;

ü by the turn of the century had begun to decline as its limited resources were exhausted;

ü its most popular writers turned to other literary modes.

Naturalists:

ü tried to achieve extreme objectivity in presenting characters of low social and economic classes;

ü emphasized that:

a) world was amoral;

b) men and women had no free will and their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment;

c) religion was illusory;

d) the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.

Realism helped prepare the way for social and artistic revolutions of the 20^th century.

Stephen Crane. Jack London, Theodore Dreiser

ü wrote detailed descriptions of the lives of people of low social classes;

ü offered frank treatment of human passion and sexuality;

ü portrayed men and women overwhelmed by the blind forces of nature.