Realism in American Literature 1865-1914

literary concerns of Realism

Romanticism
1865-1915

Realism
1916-1946

Modernism
1946 – Present

Contemporary and Post-Modern Period

poet, early Realist
Leaves of Grass
“O Captain, My Captain”

(1865 -1915)
Science, industry and transportation are expanding.

Literature also was

growing, but most new writers were not Romantics or Transcendentalists. They are Realists.

The “Frontier” did not exist as before; its legacy changed and impacted Realists in its new form.

The aftermath of the Civil War meant that Americans were less certain and optimistic about the future.

The idealism of the Romantics and philosophy of Transcendentalists seemed out of date and irrelevant to many readers.

which had been made with studied care…His body was placed

so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long thin locks of gray fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. ”

He was most fifty and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and you could see his eyes shining through…there warn’t no color in his face; it was white…a white to make a body sick…a tree-toad white, a fish belly white. As for his clothes, just rags, that’s all.

instruct and entertain”
Character is more important than plot.
Subject matter

is drawn from real life experience.
The realists reject symbolism and romanticizing of subjects.
Settings are usually those familiar to the author.
Plots emphasized “the norm of daily experience”
Ordinary characters

Pioneers!
My Antonia
Bret Harte “Outcasts of Poker Flats”
Jack London
The Call of

the Wild
Kate Chopin!
Story of an Hour
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

as it is seen by toads…and a story written by

a measuring worm.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
Capturing the commonplace
For Twain and other authors, narrative voice is one of division – before and after war; conventions versus personal conviction
Writing in vernacular and local dialect
Local stories
Nature again
Yes, its beauty, but also its hardship and how it wears the human spirit down

Missouri.
Traveled throughout the United States during his adult life, including

to California and Europe.
Much of his writing stemmed from his travel and boyhood experiences.
Was well known for his sense of humor and his satirical writing style.
Died in 1910

the tail learns something he can learn in no other

way.
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter
Classic: A book which people praise and don't read.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

days the whole community was agreed as to one thing:…the

sacredness of slave property. To help steal a horse or a cow was a low crime, but to help a hunted slave…or hesitate to promptly betray him to the slave-catcher … was a much baser crime, & carried with it a stain, a moral smirch which nothing could wipe away. That this sentiment should exist among slave-owners is comprehensible--there were good commercial reasons for it--but that it should exist & did exist among the paupers, the loafers the tag-rag & bobtail of the community, & in a passionate & uncompromising form, is not in our remote day realizable. It seemed natural enough to me then; natural enough that Huck & his father the worthless loafer should feel it & approve it, though it seems now absurd.

It shows that that strange thing, the conscience--the unerring monitor--can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early & stick to it.