part iv the literature of realism realism local colorism naturalism

Part IV The Literature of Realism

Realism

Local Colorism

Naturalism

I. Social Background

1. The Civil War (1860 – 1865)1) Reunification of the North and the South; fast development of capitalism;

2) A turning point of American culture: most people abandoned Transcendentalism gradually and lost old moral values

2. Industrialization & urbanization American economy developed very rapidly in the late

part of the 19th century. New York replaced Boston as the intellectual center.


3. Business growth & exploitation of natural resources

Money concentrated into the hands of a few while the masses struggled for survival. Extreme poverty appeared. Most people in the country developed strong ambition for power and money.

4. Ceasing of isolation 1) telegraph lines spanning the nation 2) a trans-Atlantic cable joining America and Europe 3) the first transcontinental railroad was built


5. The closing of the frontiersBy 1890 the frontier, the westward moving line of settlement begun 300 years before on the Atlantic coast, ceased to exist. Yet its influence would long remain, shaping the life of the nation and inspiring the legends, novels, and western movies by which the world would come to know America.


6. Increase of population From 1870 to 1890 the total population of the United

States doubled. From 1860 to 1910 the population of Philadelphia tripled, that of New York more than quadrupled, while the population of Chicago increased twenty times to two million, making it the nation’s second largest city.


7. Monopolization and the widening of the gulf between the rich and the poor

By the mid 1890s the United States could boast 4,000 millionaires. The rich prospered mightily, and immense power came to such industrial and banking magnates as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan. Yet the growth of business and industry also widened the gulf between the rich and the poor, giving rise to reform movements and labor unions that voiced the grievance of debt-ridden farmers and of immigrant workers living in city slums and laboring in giant, impersonal factories.


8. The gilded age / a gingerbread era --- Mark Twain

An age of excess and extremes, of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hope, of a prosperous surface and developing evils in society.

II. Literary Characteristics

1. Women’s literature In the latter half the 19th century, women became th

e nation’s dominant cultural force, a position they have never relinquished.

1) ladies’ journalism----The Ladies Home Journal 2) women authors and “molasses fiction” Emily Dickinson Harriet Beacher Stowe Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth Edith Wharton


2. The decline of romanticism and the beginning of realism

1) Reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism which made people escape from the social reality

2) Time: the latter half of the 19th century, esp. 1870s ---1880s


3) Theme: the world of experience, of the commonplace and the familiar and the low; real characters; real scenes; real incidents;

3. Important figures of realism William HowellsHamlin GarlandMark TwainHenry James


4. Realism Influenced by such Europeans as Zola, Flaubert,

Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, America’s most noteworthy new writers established a literature of realism.(1) a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life;(2) a real and objective representation of actuality (here and now), the ordinary and the local; (3) the call for “reality and truth”; (4) the description of typical characters in typical circumstances;


5. William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920)

the arbiter and the most important champion to start realism


1) LifeA. born in Midwest, Ohio, a humble familyB. little formal education but read widelyC. had been a reporter and wrote a biography which helped Lincoln win presidencyD. American consul in VeniceE. editor-in-chief of The Atlantic MonthlyF. loved to help young writersG. nickname “Dean ( 泰斗 ) of the country’s literature”; first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters


2) Theory (In his production “Criticism and Fiction”)A. realism: a quest of the average and habituala. “Let fictions cease to lie about life;” b. “Let’s portray man and woman in a way that we meet them in our real life;”

B. concerned with “motives” and psychological conflictsC. a free and simple design of the plot D. real charactersE. stressing moral values


3) WorksHe wrote all kinds of literary productions in his whole life. His most famous novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). Two other important works are A Modern Instance (1882) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890).


◆Notice the meaning of “rise” in the title of the novel: rise in wealth and rise in morality. This novel is a good specimen of Howells’ theory. There is nothing heroic in the novel. The hero is a representative of common Bostonians. And from the plot you can find the author’s stress on moral values.


4) Comment A. Though he criticized the materialism, he was

mainly optimistic. He believed in the strength of personal moral elevation. So lots of later scholars criticized his optimistic treatment of the “smiling aspects of life”.

B. limitation: wanting in depth


5. Realism and local colorismRealism first appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam ( 混合物 ) of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things was immediately observable; the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America.

Bret Harte was the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity, presenting stories of western mining towns with colorful gamblers, outlaws, and scandalous women.


Harte, Harriet Beacher Stowe, Kate Chopin, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mark Twain provided regional stories and tales of the life of America’s Westerners, Southerners, and Easterners. Local color fiction reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, but by the turn of the century it had begun to decline.


6. Naturalism1) Naturalism is a new and harsher realism;2) a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment;

The naturalists emphasized that the world was amoral, that men and women had no free will, that their lives were controlled by heredity and the environment, that religious “truths” were illusory, that the destiny of humanity was misery in life and oblivion in death.


3) influence of the teachings of Charles Darwin----natural selection and the survival of the fittest

influence of the teachings of Herbert Spencer----social Darwinism; the jungle law

influence of Emile Zola


4) representatives of naturalismThe pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry Adams, and Theodore Dreiser. Their detailed descriptions of the lives of the down-trodden and the abnormal, their frank treatment of human passion and sexuality, and their portrayal of men and women overwhelmed by the blind forces of nature still exert a powerful influence on modern writers.


7. Conclusion Although realism and naturalism were products of th

e 19th century, their final triumph came in the 20th century, with the popular and critical successes of such writers as Edwin Arlington Robinson, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner.

Romanticism did not die out, it could still be found in the popular television heroes and heroines of unspotted virtue and dazzling accomplishments.


At the turn of the century, the American literary scene = romanticism + local colorism + realism + naturalism

part iv the literature of realism realism local colorism naturalism

Documents

s slide

social background

social reality

southworth edith wharton

literary characteristics

total population

population of philadelphia

population of chicago