1861 - 1900

Causes for Civil War

A variety of economic, political, and social differences between the North and South. Slavery was the core reason for the war.South needed a work force for exportsSouth also needed the industrial NorthNorth regarded the Fed. Govt. as authoritySouth championed states’ rights.

Civil War begins w/Conf. attack on Fort Sumter North

Free SlavesPreserve the

Constitutional Union

SouthStates’ rightsSouthern way of life

Historical Highlights

The C.W. results in the deaths of over 600,000

Slavery abolished in 1865 Lincoln assassinated on April 14, 1865 Technology advanced with the invention

of the telephone(1876), phonograph(1877), and the electric light bulb (1879)

Literary Highlights

Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin – motivates the Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography (1855) – fuels the antislavery cause

Walt Whitman publishes his first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855

Literary Highlights

The literary movement of realism takes shape

Emily Dickinson dies in 1886 – her poems are published after her death

Response to war

Idealism vs. DisillusionmentWhat gave one writer optimism during this

time gave another author pessimism.Whitman found heroism and a strength in

the lives of the CW soldiers – witnessed the war first hand

Melville stripped human nature bare and displayed humanity’s basic evil.

War experience

Few American writers experienced the war firsthand.Emerson stayed in Concord “knitting

mittens”Thoreau (for Abolition) died in 1862Hawthorne died in 1864Dickinson stayed in her attic in AmherstHowell, James, and Adams were abroad

Realism

Dominated American fiction from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

Realists sought to accurately portray real life without filtering it through personal feelings, romanticism, or idealism.

New Generation of Writers Subjects came from the slums of cities Factories replaced farmland Corrupt politicians Prostitutes

Roots of Realism – EuropeFound in the following writers Daniel Defoe George Eliot Anthony Trollope Honore de Balzac Stendhal

Gustave Flaubert Leo Tolstoy

Realistic Novel

The Red Badge of Courage was written by a man who was born six years after the Civil War ended. – Stephen Crane

The American Romantics held an aversion for Realism

The Realist writers emerged after the Civil War

The Realist Novel

Realism was used to explain why ordinary people behave the way they do.

Subject matter relied on emerging sciences of human and animal behaviorBiologyPsychologySociology

Realism = Regionalism

Regionalism was literature that emphasized a specific geographical setting and made use of the speech and mannerisms of the people in that region.

Regionalism = Local Color

Regionalists

Sarah Orne Jewett – Maine Kate Chopin – Louisiana Harriet Beecher Stowe – New England Bret Harte – The West Mark Twain – Mississippi River Valley

Mark Twain is the best –known example as a regional writer. He was first known as a regional humorist and then evolved into a writer of comic view of society with satiric qualities.

His best novel, Huck Finn, describes the moral growth of a comic character. In an environment that is at the same time physically beautiful and morally repugnant.

Realism vs. Naturalism

An extension of realism. Naturalists relied heavily on psychology

and sociology – tended to dissect human behavior.

Influenced by Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest

Outstanding naturalists – Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris

Psychological Fiction

Henry James is considered America’s greatest writer of this type of novel.

Concentrated on the distinctions in character motivation.