The Realism War in American Literature

Slides:



Advertisements
Similar presentations
Chapter 7 The Era of Realism and Naturalism
Advertisements

American Regionalism, Realism, and Naturalism ’s.
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
American Regionalism, Realism, and Naturalism (ish)
By time periods/Literary genres of study
The Realism War James, Twain, and Howells Nineteenth-century Definitions of Romance Romance focuses “upon the extraordinary, the mysterious, the imaginary.”
Realism American Literature. Realism reaction to Romantic ideals of the previous generation(s). defined as "the faithful representation of reality”. Realist.
Differences and Similarities Between Realism and Naturalism in American Literature 崔璨.
What is Realism? A faithful representation of reality in literature, also known as “verisimilitude.” Emphasis on development of believable characters.
Realism
American Literature Realism, Regionalism and Naturalism Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape.
Realism in Literature A response to Romanticism. What is Realism? American Realism is a style in art, music, and literature that depicts the lives and.
American Realism ( ).
REALISM Realism is the artistic response to the Civil War and the industrial/economic revolution that swept Europe and America in the last part of the.
The Realism War James, Twain, and Howells Nineteenth-century Definitions of Romance Romance focuses “upon the extraordinary, the mysterious, the imaginary.”
The Faithful Representation of Reality
American Realism & Naturalism No More Romantic Sunshine & Rainbows…
American Realism & Naturalism
American Realism Life in America n Still growing and prosperous at end of 1800s. n Most powerful nation in western hemisphere and about to.
American Literature Realism, Regionalism and Naturalism Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape.
American Realism "Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." - William Dean Howells.
Keeping It Real Since  Before 1620: (Native Americans/Explorers)  1620 – 1700s: (Puritans)  1730 – 1745: (Great Awakening)  1745 – 1800: (Rationalists/Deists)
American Literature Realism and Naturalism
Realism American Literature. Realism reaction to Romantic ideals of the previous generation(s). defined as "the faithful representation of reality”. Realist.
“Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” --William Dean Howells.
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( ) Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape.
Realism and Naturalism American Literature Grab a book from the shelf and prepare to take some notes from the PPT before a short story today. Remember.
Realism and Naturalism
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( ) Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape.
From Romanticism to Realism American Literature from the Civil War to WWI.
Realism and Naturalism Weeks Howells “Editha” Chopin “The Storm” James “The Pupil” London “To Build a Fire”
THE RISE OF REALISM: “The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.” -Henry James Prisoners from the.
19th-Century Realism & William Dean Howells
Agenda-honors Bellringer: Write your own example of the four literary devices that were covered last class. Raven activity Red Death/Usher Discussion Realism/Naturalism.
American Literature Timeline English 11. Colonial/Puritanism The Colonial movement was mostly instructional. It was to spread the word of God,
The Victorian Age Realism and Naturalism The Victorian Age encompasses the rise of two major literary movements: Realism and Naturalism. These.
신성 식 조양 진 백승 운. 1. Backgroud 2. Comparison 3. Vocabularies 4. Summary 5. Authors & Works.
The Era of Realism and Naturalism 조 영지 김 주리 배 하나 송 인선 No. 7.
REALISM AND REGIONALISM Corrine Davis, Christina Popper, Jamyra Witherspoon.
Nathaniel Hawthorne & Dark Romanticism
( ) A famous novelist and literary critic
No More Romantic Sunshine & Rainbows…
Realism in American Literature
By: Titan Nhan, Sunny Trivedi, and Nicole DiPietro
Realism.
American Literature Realism and Naturalism
Literary Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism
American Realism UNIT GOAL: Write an expository essay that evaluates how REALIST artists and author’s effectively use ethos, pathos, and/or.
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
SIFT A Literary Analysis Method
American Realism.
American Realism & Naturalism
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
Realism & Naturalism ( )
Realism 1855 – 1914.
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
The American Renaissance
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
American Literature Realism and Naturalism
American Regionalism, Realism, and Naturalism
Realism in American Literature
ROMANTICISM PERIOD.
Post Civil War Era Literature
Welcome to 2nd Semester 11th Grade English!
American Realism & Naturalism
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
American Realism & Naturalism
The Age of Realism( ) Definition:
American Literature Realism and Naturalism ( )
Presentation transcript:

The Realism War in American Literature James, Twain, and Howells The Realism War in American Literature

Nineteenth-century Definitions of Romance Romance focuses “upon the extraordinary, the mysterious, the imaginary.” –Bliss Perry (1903) Nathaniel Hawthorne: the romance “has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation” (Preface to The House of the Seven Gables) Bliss Perry, 1903. Perry was editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

Romance and Realism Events may be implausible or heightened versions of reality. Characters may be symbolic rather than realistic; they may be obsessed with an issue or problem. Language may be lofty or poetic. Class and background are less important than the relationship of the individual to the main theme of the text. Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance Renders reality in detail. Character is more important than action and plot. Complex ethical choices are often the subject. Language is vernacular, sometimes with dialect. Class and background are important and play a role in the plot. The Rise of Silas Lapham, Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady

Romance and Realism: Taste and Class Aspired to the ideal Thought to be more genteel since it did not show the vulgar details of life Realism Thought to be more democratic Critics stressed the potential for vulgarity and its emphasis on the commonplace Potential “poison” for the pure of mind A common complaint is that realistic works forced readers into proximity with people whom they would never invite for dinner.

W. D. Howells Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1871-1881 “Editor’s Study” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (January 1886- March 1892) Criticism and Fiction (1891; collected from “Editor’s Study” columns)

Howells on Realism “Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” --William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Study,” November 1889. P. 966. Howells wrote the “Editor’s Study” for Harper’s Monthly Magazine from January 1886 to March 1892. For links to all the articles online, go to http://www.gonzaga.edu/howells/edstudy.htm

The Ideal Grasshopper “We hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man . . . .will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it . . . Because it is not like a real grasshopper” --W. D. Howells, 1887 This selection from the “Editor’s Study” for December 1887 features Howells’s famous comparison between the “ideal grasshopper” drawn from art, the model to which most writers aspire, and the “real grasshopper,” the model from life which Howells says that writers should study instead. Image courtesy of http://www.100freewallpapers.com/animals/grasshopper.jpg

The Smiling Aspects of Life We invite our novelists, therefore, to concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and to seek the universal in the individual rather than in the commonplace.” –W. D. Howells, 1886 This much-misunderstood passage from the “Editor’s Study” (September 1886) has been used to show Howells’s timidity as a realist in the “genteel tradition.” What he actually advocates is that realist writers look at life rather than affecting a fashionable level of gloom to imitate the works of Russian writers such as Doestoevsky. Howells goes on to add this equally optimistic statement: “It will not do to boast, but it is well to be true to the facts, and to see that, apart from these purely mortal troubles, the race here enjoys conditions in which most of the ills that have darkened its annals may be averted by honest work and unselfish behavior. It is only now and then, when some dark shadow of our shameful past appears, that we can believe there ever was a tragic element in our prosperity.”

Howells on James (Century 1882) The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray . . . . These great men are of the past. The new school derives from Hawthorne and George Eliot rather than any others . . . . This school, which is so largely of the future as well as the present, finds its chief exemplar in Mr. James. This essay is sometimes cited as the one that started the “realism war,” although most of the debate occurred later in the 1880s and 1890s.

The Reaction A Literary Combination. Mr. H-w-lls: Are you the tallest now, Mr. James? Mr. J-mes (ignoring the question): Be so uncommonly kind, H-w-lls, as to let me down easy: it may be we have both got to grow. From Punch. See Michael Anesko’s Letters, Fictions, Lives for a good account of the controversy.

Attack on Howells I H. C. Vedder. “Can it be that Mr. Howells gives us in his books a fair representation of life as he has known it? Has his whole experience been of this stale, flat unprofitable sort?” “Has he never known anybody who has a soul above buttons?” American Writers of Today, 1894.

Attack on Howells II: William Roscoe Thayer French realism should be called “Epidermism,” not realism, because it reduces “literature, art, and morals to anarchy.” The Rise of Silas Lapham was “produced by Epidermist methods” by an author who “smacked his lips” over Zola’s filth.

Maurice Thompson: Realism As Disease. Realists represent “literary decadence” and worship “the vulgar, the commonplace, and the insignificant.” The best part of Howells is “romance disguised as realism. His literary tissue is healthy, the spirit of his work is even, calm, just, and his purpose is pure,” so he cannot be a realist. Picture is Thomas Eakins’s The Gross Clinic (1875).

Howells to James, 1915 “I am comparatively a dead cult with my statues cast down and the grass growing over them in the pale moonlight” (Selected Letters 6: 31).

American Literary Movements American Transcendentalism, 1834-1854 (Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, William Ellery Channing) (American Romanticism, 1830s through 1850s) Domestic fiction, 1850s through 1870s Local color or regional fiction, 1865-1890s “Romantic revival” of adventure fiction, fables of empire, and and Aestheticism, 1890s-1910 Progressive Era social problem novels, 1905-1915 Modernism, 1920s-1940s (and continuing) Social Realism, 1930s And in the midst of these, beginning in 1893 ---

American Literary Naturalism Begins in 1893 with Crane’s Maggie Ends in (take your pick) . . . 1906-1915, Progressive Era (Upton Sinclair, David Graham Phillips) 1920s, modernism (Evelyn Scott, John Dos Passos) 1939, end of social realism (John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Meridel Le Sueur) 1945, World War II (Norman Mailer) 1960s (Joyce Carol Oates) Still continuing (Don DeLillo, in graphic novels, and so on)