Realism and Naturalism (1865 - 1914)
Civil War (1861 - 1865)
Before the war
most writers had lived on the Eastern seacoast, particularly in New England
most prominent writers had been aristocrats
most writers had been educated in some Eastern colleges - a large share of them in Harvard
After the war
writers were from the South, the Middle West, even the Far West
some leading writers like Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Emily Dickinson and William dean Howells were not college educated and other like S. Clemens did not have a high school education
New writings were
less scholarly
less genteel (not mannerly, befitting the upper classes)
less polished
more robust (strong, lusty)
more full of life
less influenced by Europe and more by the new American nation
Post-War America
In the half century between the end of the Civil War and the outbreak of World War I the American nation:
set its continental boundaries
opened its doors to throngs of immigrants
developed into an industrial giant
moved toward leadership in world affairs
Such unprecedented change gave rise:
to political problems
to social disorders
intellectual upheavals (tumult, unrest, commotion)
American writers forced to assess and to reflect the realities of their times:
failure of Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South
brutal scramble for wealth and power among corrupt and ruthless financiers in the North
corruption, bribery, maladministration
introduction of revolutionary inventions
new theories of scientific thought
All of this cries out for literary interpretation.
FICTION OF THE GENERATION OF
Realism: William Dean Howells and Henry James (the 1870-1880)
Naturalism: Frank Norris and Dreiser (the 1890)
Realism and Naturalism constitute a critical response to the conditions of late-nineteenth-century American life.
William Dean Howells Criticism and Fiction (1891) monthly essays
W.D. Howells argued in his “Editor's Study” column in Harper's Magazine, that
literature ought to reflect and play a major role In encouraging the social and political progress that characterized nineteenth-century life, progress that had received its fullest expression in the American effort to unite scientific inquiry and political democracy into a means for a better life for all men
nineteenth century thought loosely joining social, material, and intellectual life into a triumphant forward march
Howells famous analogy in 1891collection of “Editor's Study”
To be true and honest in fiction, within a realistic aesthetic in which the writer, like a scientist with democratic values, discards the old heroic and ideal, and therefore false, cardboard mode of a grasshopper and depicts the commonplace activities of a commonplace grasshopper.
Middle - class
The underlying beliefs of this first generation of critics of realism were firmly middle-class. Realism of American fiction was portraying “the widely divergent phases of our American civilization.” That is the local color literature.
Function of literature
universal progress
rejection of the outworn values of the past in favour of those of the present
rejecting the romantic material and formulas of earlier fiction (limited beliefs and social life of their moment of origin)
contemporary life objectively depicted
literature made Americans known to each other in their common political and social progress (later Howell added defects)
literature expressed above all of middle-class taste and values
literature was devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts
Relishing the facts
realists were less concerned with their subjective responses and more with the tangible (palpable) world outside their psyches
they were generally not concerned with absolutes or ideals
they were dealing with the social problems of real persons in real places, in the present
More characteristics of Realism
reality is presented closely and in comprehensive detail
characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive
characters are more important than action and plot; complex ethnical choices are often the subject of writing
class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class
realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements
diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact
objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses
Variant forms of Realism
reticent realism - W.D. Howells (novelist, playwright, literary critic) called for truthful treatment of the material but at the same time was against showing drastic situations, murders, ugliness
psychological realism - interior realism, mysteries of human passion, human motivation, decisions, subtlety of insight, studying mental and emotional traps that limit people's desire and ability to change
Naturalism
Fiction of grim realism, in which the writer observers human characteristics like a scientist observing ants, seeing them as the products and victims of environment and heredity.
The founder of Naturalism
French novelist Emile Zola (1840 - 1902), who In vast series of 20 novels about the family