Literary Realism and sub genresNATURALISM, AND LOCAL COLOR

Literary RealismWRITERS ASSOCIATED WITH REALISM:

TWAINWHARTONHOWELLS

Literary Realism: Properties/Characteristics

• Realism is the primary, or overriding, literary genre from the post Civil War era to about 1910. • Realism is an attempt to record American life as it existed at the

time• Deals with accurate representation and exploration of American

lives in various contexts - particularly changing American cultural, social, and economic scene• Focuses on the physical and tactile (sensual) world of

characters • Opposed to psychological/metaphysical/spiritual world of

Romantics/Transcendentalists

Realism:• Technique of writing - Faithful representation of reality - • Denotes a particular kind of subject matter & character – Realists

center attention on the immediate, the here and now, specific action and verifiable consequences. • Characters are ordinary • Represent everyday, generally middle class, individuals

•  Established uniquely/prototypical American protagonists • Vernacular male hero – boy protagonist – Huck Finn• All-American Girl• Bewildered and anxious/stressed middle class family and

business person• Psychologically complicated citizens in an increasingly diverse

social/cultural America

Realism Characteristics:• Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail - selective

presentations of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude• Complex ethical choices are often the subject - characters become more

important than plot• Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive -

they are in explicable relationship to nature, themselves, each other, their social class and their own past

• Class is important - generally serves aspirations of middle class• Events are usually plausible - avoid sensational and dramatic elements of

naturalism and romanticism• Diction is natural vernacular - not heightened or poetic [i.e. Huck Finn]• Objectivity in presentation is extremely important• Redemption of the individual is found within the social context – world

NaturalismWRITERS ASSOCIATED WITH NATURALISM:

CRANELONDONBIERCE

Naturalism

• Literary Naturalism refers to writing that applies scientific principles of objective observation to the study of human behavior and characters within the context of their surroundings.

• American literary Naturalism emerged during a time of tremendous cultural and economic upheaval in the United States. In the late nineteenth century, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization, and immigration led to seismic shifts in the American political, cultural, and social landscape.

Naturalism• Naturalist writers depicted these changing times by chronicling

the experiences of impoverished and uneducated people--usually immigrants--living in squalor and struggling to survive in an amoral and indifferent world.

• These writers strived to accurately portray human existence by creating characters that are governed by forces of heredity and environment, and viewed as victims of social Darwinism and the American Dream.

• Writers in the Naturalist school rejected organized religion and the concept of free will, instead focusing on how social context and environment affect human interaction and character development.

Naturalism• Naturalism anticipates modernism – presents a

new vision of experience – insignificance of the forward movement of time• Reaffirms the sanctity of the self & the emotional

reality of basic nature and act         • Debases the protagonist as a character from whom

the reader can learn something about human nature.

Characters in Realism

• In progression of narrative events – physical, psychological, etc – characters generally grow – benefit from their experiences

Characters in Naturalism

• Confrontations / experiences with the external world – world beyond themselves – they fail to learn or fail to understand what they have experienced

• Search for identity – meaning in their experiences – produces no result – irony of naturalism; characters remain unchanged.

Local Color - RegionalismWRITERS ASSOCIATED WITH LOCAL COLOR/REGIONALISM:

FREEMANCHOPINTWAIN

WHARTON

Regionalism and Local Color - Characteristics• Focuses on the characters - dialect - customs - topography

and other features particular to a specific region• Local Color presents dual influences of romanticism and

realism - the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands - strange customs - or exotic scenes but retains through the use of minute detail loyalty and accuracy of description

• Customary form - short story or the "sketch"• Some critics argue that regional - local color writing helped

to unify the country after the civil war and to the building of a national identity - dominate form of writing between 1865 - 1900

Local Color Characteristics• Setting - emphasis on nature and the limitations it imposes - settings are often remote

and/or inaccessible. Setting is integral to the story and sometimes becomes a character in the story

• Characters - focus on characters of the district or region rather than on individuals. Characters become character types - sometimes quaint or stereotypical. Characters are marked by their adherence to old ways - by dialect - by particular personality traits peculiar to the region.

• Narrator - typically an educated observer from the world beyond - narrator learns something about the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance. Serves as a moderator between the world of the characters and urban audience of readers

• Plots - common observation is that nothing happens in local color stories by women authors - frequently nothing does happen. Stories generally include lots of story telling and revolve around the community and its rituals

• Themes - antipathy to change and nostalgia for an always past golden age. Celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity characterizes women's local color stories - tension/conflict between rural and urban values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an interloper who seeks something from the community

Local Color Techniques

• Use of dialect to establish credibility and authenticity of characters

• Use of detailed description, especially small, seemingly insignificant details central to the understanding of a region

• Frequent use of the "frame story" in which the narrator hears some tale of the region

Importance of Local Color writing

• Ended East Coast (New England) domination of American literature

• Opened new parts of country – people and geography for literature

• Introduced new languages (dialect and vernacular) for rendering the American experience: Immigrant; African-American; Women

• Sentimentalized American past• Cast local experience on a universal

plain• Opened way to social criticism and

naturalism