1. Realism and Naturalism
Civil War Literature
Realism and Naturalism

2. Changing the Literary Landscape
The deadliest and bloodiest war in American History, the Civil War changed everything.
No longer could people be concerned with chasing the idealized promise of the new Nation, as in the American Renaissance – not when friends were fighting with friends, and brothers fighting brothers. The nation was being torn apart by vehement disagreements about issues pertinent to so many lives: slavery, abolition, industrialization, urbanization.
With the war, reality hit hard and when it did, it took away nearly all of the optimism and promise that America carried from the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the U. S. Constitution.
With that promise and idealism gone, what would be the new focus for writers and artists in America?
After watching the above video of the Battle of Antietam, why do you think the Civil War had the capacity to drastically change the literary landscape of the American Renaissance?

3. Role of the Writer and Society in Civil War Literature
Literary Forms for Expressing Social and Political Issues
Muckraking journalism – digging up dirt on politicians, social leaders
Slave spirituals
Slave narratives – Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs
Soldiers’ diaries and war journals
Popular Literature
Rags to riches tales
Irony – Gift of the Magi
Fantasy/escapist literature (Wizard of Oz)
Realism, naturalism, and the Social and Political issues
Depicts the reality and gruesomeness of war/society
Rise of technology leads to fear and ill-favor
Nature becomes the enemy of man

4. Realism
Period of American literature from the beginning of the Civil War (1861) to the beginning of WWI (1914)
The Civil War made life so horrific that people could not longer remain interested in the intellectual pursuit of the promise and idealism of the Renaissance.
As a result, authors of the Civil War focuses on the accurate representation and exploration of American lives.
Not exploring to find the PROMISE or IDEAL, but to find objective truth.
Wanted to depict the regions accurately, including using “local color” or regional dialects in their writing

5. Elements of American Realism
Detail is more important than plot
Character is more important than plot
Subject of writing become complex ethical choices – not idealized, cut and dried issues.
Class is important! Middle class and working class will be more prevalent in writing. Authors are writing about what they know.
Events are believable, based in real world. (not headless horsemen)
Diction is common vernacular (language is more ordinary and plain than Romantics)

6. Realism upgrade: NATURALISM
Expands on the base begun by Realism
One step further: people and their lives are deeply affected by natural forces such as heredity, environment, or even chance.
People (characters) cannot control such forces, and must carry on in their lives the best way they can.
Basically, the world and Nature is trying to kill you!
A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."

7. What makes American Literature American?
Literary Elements
Settings: more realistic, concrete settings that people would know and possibly had visited
wild west,
riverboats,
Yukon wilderness,
battlefields, tenements,
Language: common speech and dialects, vulgarities
Humor: exposed corruption, dissect and deconstruct human problems
Roles of Civil War Writers
Realists – a more OBJECTIVE outlook, looked at hard facts not impressions
Naturalists – pitted man against nature, with man losing more often than not
People’s fate controlled by Heredity, environment, and social conditions
People could NOT rise above their circumstances
Writers tried to document the true settings and people of the time

8. Place and the Literature of the Civil War
Writers of the North
Tech advances -> movement into larger cities; bigger, stronger was better
Writers focused on crowded environments, work, crime, immigrants, organized labor
Southern Writers and the Physical Environment
War destroyed the idyllic plantations of the south, leading to stories of loss and destitution
Southern writers focused on the distinctive qualities of the south, genteelism, hospitality, racism,
Expressions of Place in Civil War Writing
Local color – dialects, accents, attitudes
Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston (later)

9. Names and Terms to Know
Fort Sumpter – Fort in SC where Civil War started
Homestead Act – 1862, promised 160 acres to anyone who was willing to work them
Guilded Age – period of low wages, disease, child labor, very few wealthy – conspicuous consumption
Horatio Alger – wrote rags to riches tales for young adults
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Cranes novel about the Civil War, depicts the loss of innocence
Local Color – character and details particular to a specific region, particularly the west and south.
Abolition – the act of outlawing slavery in the United States.