AMERICAN REALISM1850-1900

Civil War

Casualties, 1861-1865 Federal: 664,928 Confederate: 483,026

Battles destroyed farms and homes.

Cities were raided and burned. Sherman’s March to

the Sea

Civil War and Journalism

Journalistic accounts of the Civil War increased interest in realistic writing.

Increased use of photography also helped shape America’s taste for realistic depictions.

Journalism cont’d

Realism Realism – prominent literary

movement during the late 19th and early 20th century in America

The Realists: were writers who sought to portray real

life without filtering it through personal feelings, romanticism, or idealism

wanted to be as accurate as possible when depicting people, places, and things

Characteristics of Realism Realistic writing is characterized by:

honest, believable characters realistic dialogue events in the story that seem possible in

real life characters that are driven by real

motives and emotions characters that don’t change without

sufficient reason objectivity

Reaction to Romanticism

Regionalism

Regionalism is a smaller movement within realism

Characteristics include:using regional dialectsdescriptions of a local area or regionlocal cultures and customs

Mark Twain

Kate Chopin

Stephen Crane

Frederick Douglass