Literature of the Civil War

The War’s Impact on Literature

Up to and during the Civil War, writers shifted from Romanticism to Realism in response to the cultural and social forces affecting the nation.

Depictions of slavery—slave narratives—became a popular form (Frederick Douglass) Stirred Northern sympathies Infuriated Southern planters

Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell: one of the most famous novels in American history; about the war and set during Reconstruction

Realism (1865-1915)

Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of literature that doesn't idealize people or places

People in society defined by "class"; materialismReflect ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and

Marx (how money and class structure control a nation)

Style Realism a reaction against romanticism; told it like it was focus on lives of ordinary people; rejected heroic and

adventurous anti-materialism; rejected the new "class" system view of nature as a powerful and indifferent force beyond

man's control

Realism: Major Writers

The Civil War (1855-1865) Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

The most famous woman of her day Uncle Tom's Cabin: most influential book of the 19th

Century; 1st to sell 1 mil. copies one of the most effective documents of propaganda;

helped fuel the Civil War

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) an escaped slave; one of the most effective orators

of his day influential newspaper writer; militant abolitionist;

diplomat autobiography an instant and enduring classic of

courage

Other Works influenced by War

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Drum-Taps, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, Walt Whitman

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane

Spirituals

Also called “sorrow songs”Rooted in traditional African musicOften referred to stories from the Bible about

captivity (Israelites in Egypt) Sometimes contained “codes” so that slaves

could communicate escape plansInfluenced blues and jazz music

Spirituals

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”“Go Down, Moses”“Keep Your Hand on the Plow”