1. Realism

2. Characteristics: Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail.
Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject
Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past

3. Characteristics:
Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of a rising middle class
Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances
Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact

4. Additional notes:
Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism.

5. Additional notes:
In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century.
Some famous American realists:
Mark Twain
Ambrose Bierce
William Dean Howells

6. Realism – sub-categories:
Regionalism:
setting is prominent
makes a particular geographical area as the substance (subject matter, culture, manner of speech, folklore, history) for literature
implies a recognition, from the colonial period to the present, of differences among specific areas of the country

7. Realism – sub-categories:
Local color:
distinguishing devices are its humor, dialect, caricature, legitimate outside narrator, wise fool inside narrator, and pastoralism
Allowed writers who were not commercially “mainstream” to gain acceptance and a wider audience