Realism and Naturalism

Realism

Realism is an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures and objects exactly as they act or appear in life (a faithful representation of reality).

a movement that began in the mid-19th century, in reaction to the highly subjective approach of romanticism

• George Eliot introduced realism into English fiction

• Mark Twain and William Dean Howells were the pioneers of realism in the United States

• Henry James's concern with character motivation and behavior led to the development of the psychological novel

• the main tenet of realism:

= writers must set down their observations impartially and objectively

• faithful representation of life and character

• middle-class life and preoccupations

Naturalism

• regard human behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions,

• reject free will,

• adopt the biological determinism of Charles Darwin and the economic determinism of Karl Marx.

Exponents of Naturalism

First prominently exhibited in the writings of:

• Edmond Louis Antoine de Goncourt

• his brother Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt

• Émile Zola

American exponents of naturalism:

• Frank Norris

• Sherwood Anderson

• John Dos Passos

• Theodore Dreiser

• James T. Farrell

William Dean Howells
(1837-1920)

• American novelist and critic, born in Ohio.

• In 1860, he wrote the campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln. After Lincoln's election, Howells was appointed United States consul in Venice, Italy, in 1861.

William Dean Howells wrote more than 30 novels, among them:

• A Modern Instance (1882), the story of a failed marriage,

• A Woman's Reason (1883), a study of Boston society,

• The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), a study of a self-made businessman who never loses his integrity.

In the 1880s Howells became concerned with social issues:

• Annie Kilburn (1888) deals with class contrasts in a New England town

• A Traveler from Altruria (1894) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907) explored the problems of industrial America

• A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), a dramatic novel about the newly rich, socialism, and labor strife in New York City, may be Howells's best work of fiction.

The critical works of William Dean Howells include:
Criticism and Fiction (1891), My Literary Passions (1895), and Literature and Life (1902)

Supported a diverse group of authors:

• Introduced American audiences to Émile Zola, Benito Pérez Galdós, Henrik Ibsen, and Leo Tolstoy.

• Encouraged: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Hamlin Garland.

• Promoted women writers: Sarah Orne Jewett, Edith Wharton, and Emily Dickinson.

• Editor and friend to Henry James and Mark Twain.

(Hannibal) Hamlin Garland
(1860-1940)

• Born in West Salem, Wisconsin. He grew up working on farms.

• In 1884 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he established a friendship with William Dean Howells.

• The economics of farming in the Midwest furnished the central themes of his short stories

• The grim conditions of American farm life:
  Main-Travelled Roads (1890)
  Other Main-Travelled Roads (1910).

• In 1894 Garland published Crumbling Idols, a volume of essays on literature and art in which he proposed his critical theory of veritism, a socially conscious realism intended to express unembellished truth.

• Hamlin Garland was involved in economic reform, and feminist reform movements.

• An advocate for
  Native American rights.

• Autobiographical work:
  1917 Son of the Middle Border
  1922 Daughter of the Middle Border

Jack London (1876-1916)

• Born John Griffith London in San Francisco

• worked at various odd jobs, and in 1897 and 1898 he participated in the Alaska gold rush

Wrote more than 50 books, experienced enormous popular success as an author

Frank Norris
(1870-1902)

• Born in Chicago

• Educated at the University of California and Harvard University.

• A newspaper correspondent during the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Boer War (1899-1902).

• McTeague (1899), the tragedy caused by greed in the lives of ordinary people;

• The Octopus (1901)

• The Pit (1903)

• Vandover and the Brute (1914)

• A Man's Woman (1900)

• The Responsibilities of the Novelist and Other Literary Essays (1903).

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
(1871-1945)

Born in Indiana, Dreiser was a reporter for the Chicago Daily Globe in 1892, traveling correspondent for the St. Louis Globe Democrat and for the St. Louis Republic from 1893 to 1894.

• Sister Carrie (1900)

• Jenny Gerhardt (1911)

• The Financier (1912)

• The Titan (1914)

• The “Genius” (1915)

• An American Tragedy (1925)

Dreiser believed in representing life honestly in his fiction, through detailed descriptions of the urban settings

His characters are victims of social and economic forces and of fate

A member of the United States Communist Party

• Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928)

• Tragic America (1932)

• America Is Worth Saving (1941).

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

• Born in Newark, New Jersey.

• In 1891, New York City as a freelance reporter in the slums

Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893)

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

• Crane was a correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War (1897) and the Spanish-American War (1898)

The Open Boat and Other Stories (1898)

• befriended by Joseph Conrad and Henry James

• two volumes of poetry:

The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)

War Is Kind and Other Poems (1899)

• early examples of experimental free verse.

---