american realism: a literary movement 1860- 1890
TRANSCRIPT
American Realism: a literary
movement1860-1890
Huge upheavals are changing our country and
culture.1860 -- Abraham Lincoln becomes president after attacking slavery and insisting that the Federal government has "the power of restraining the extension of the institution." 1860 -- South
Carolina votes to secede from the Union
1861 – Civil War starts
1863 -- The Emancipation Proclamation is signed
1865 – Civil War ends
1865 -- Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery
1867 -- All males over 21 are granted suffrage in US
territories
1870 -- Territory of Utah gives full suffrage to women
1871 – Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone
1876 – Custer attacks Sioux forces at Little Big Horn
1877 – Thomas Alva Edison patents phonograph
1878 – Edison invents light bulb.
1879 – “exodusters” 7-15,000 African Americans move to Kansas 1880 – Chinese
Exclusion Treaty signed
1888 -- first Kodak box cameras are
sold 1881 – Tuskagee Institute formed by
Booker T. Washington
1881 – gunfight @ OK Corral in Tombstone
1884 – Chicago houses first skyscraper 1886 – Haymarket
Riot
1887 – Dawes Severalty Act: 60 acres/ Native American family
1890 – Jane Adams forms Hull House
1896 – Plessy vs. Fergeson – separate but equal
Authors (like other artists) try to make
sense of this – the life they are seeing isn’t reflected in the Romantic literature that was previously produced in America.
Romanticism• Nature emphasized.• Prefers action to
character. • Characters not as
complexly related to each other or to their society.
• Origins and class of characters sometimes irrelevant, sometimes a mystery.
Romanticism didn’t depict their reality …
… so Realism developed in
America.
Realism is …
• Realism developed after the Civil War because the romantic novel (remember The Last of the Mohicians) could not capture the disappointment, senselessness, and horror of war.
American Realism
Realist writers used ordinary people as their subjects instead of larger than life heroes (like Hawkeye). As they wrote about regular people they had to examine local manners; another important aspect of realism is that authors tried to explain why ordinary people behave the way they do.
American Realism
While Realism focused on people …
Authors also started to ask what the effects of
PLACE (setting) on stories and the characters in them, which lead to
American Regionalism.
Regionalism is …
American Regionalism
Regionalism is literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and that
reproduces the speech and manners of people who live in that region.
While regional writers might be realistic in their depiction of speech patterns and manners, they were often unrealistic in their depiction of character and social environment. This is where regionalism differs from realism; realism tried to reproduce accurately the social conditions and human motivations.
American Regionalism
Prominent American writers during this
time:Regionalist Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Kate Chopin
Mark Twain
Realist Authors:
Stephen Crane
W. D. Howells
Edith Wharton
… so before we start our next short
stories--… be ready to examine characters in a deep, patient
analysis … using feminist criticism, psychoanalytic
theory, and structuralism.