1. THE REACTION AGAINST THE ROMANTICS: 1865-1910
REALISM
THE REACTION AGAINST THE ROMANTICS:

2. CONTRASTING PARADIGMS
Romanticism:
Present life as we would want it to be.
Realism:
Present life as it actually is.

3. ELEMENTS OF REALISM Ordinary, not extraordinary people
Middle or lower class
People you could meet on an average day: soldiers, farmers, teachers, grandfathers
Commonplace events and settings
Places you could actually see and visit
The near and familiar as opposed to the far away and exotic

4. ELEMENTS OF REALISM All aspects of life are examined
Nothing is taboo: must represent life AS IT IS, even the ugly, the degrading, the uncomfortable
The Jungle: meatpacking industry
Descriptive detail
Describe people, places, things minutely
Focus on concrete, objective detail
Accuracy of description is critical

5. ELEMENTS OF REALISM Accuracy of setting, plot, and character
Language: often written in dialect so that the actual sound of language could be rendered
Plain, straightforward prose
Smaller words and shorter sentences: keep it simple and real.

6. ELEMENTS OF REALISM
Author as objective reporter giving readers an unbiased “slice of life.”
Nothing ever is free of bias . . .
Psychological Realism
Render not just our physical appearances and actions realistically; also render internal mental and emotional aspects of people accurately.
Poe was way ahead of time here

7. Advances in the field of human psychology also fed into the preoccupation with representing the inner workings of the mind, and the delicate play of emotions. William James, brother of novelist Henry James, was a prominent figure in the early history of human psychology. Psychologists were just beginning to understand that human consciousness was far more complicated and varied than had previously been considered. Debates about nature versus nurture were as popular then as they are today. More than anything, the understanding that in the human mind there are very few absolutes was critical for the realist sensibility. To put it another way, Realism embraced the concept that people were neither completely good or completely bad, but somewhere on a spectrum

8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
Authors
Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
George Eliot ( )
Henry James ( )
Mark Twain ( )
Edith Wharton ( )

9. Realism came under attack largely because it represented such a bold departure from what readers had come to expect from the novel. The fascination with things falling apart was unpleasant to many, and critics sometimes accused the practitioners of Realism of focusing only on the negative. Readers complained that very little happened in realistic fiction, that they were all talk and little payoff.

10. Realist novelists eschewed many of the novel’s established traditions, mostly in plot structure. Typically, novels follow a definite arc of events, with an identifiable climax and resolution. They are self-contained and satisfying in their symmetry. Successful careers have been built on the scaffolding of a single story arc. The school of Realism observed that life did not follow such patterns, so neither should the novel. Instead of grand happenings, tragedies, and epic turns of events, the realist novel plodded steadily over a track not greatly disturbed by external circumstances.

11. Purpose
The purpose of all of these innovations, as with the whole of Realism, was to more accurately simulate the nature of reality – unknowable, uncertain, and ever-shifting reality.

14. CAUSES OF THE RISE OF REALISM
Reaction against Romantic excesses:
Emotion
Sentimentality
Idealism
Distorted reality

15. CAUSES OF THE RISE OF REALISM
Industrialism
Progress at cost of human dignity
Cogs in a machine: dehumanizing; thoughtless automatons
Low pay; no unions
Horrendous working conditions
Ghettos/big city slums
Loss of the American Dream
Rich get richer; poor get poorer

16. CAUSES OF THE RISE OF REALISM
Darwin and the theory of Evolution and Natural Selection
We are glorified apes—not created in God’s image
No soul or spirit: driven be same motives as animals
Nature is not divine or good
Natural Selection seems to justify destruction of the weak to feed the strong

17. CAUSES OF THE RISE OF REALISM
Science and Rational Thought reborn
Emphasis on objective, observable fact
Downplays imagination and intuition
Cold analysis over emotion: back to the Age of Reason in a way
Questioning of spiritual realms, God, that are beyond observable, empirical fact

18. CAUSES OF THE RISE OF REALISM
The Civil War
Death and destruction on an unprecedented scale
Causes questioning of God’s nature:
Why did He allow this if he is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving?
Causes questioning of human nature:
If we are good, why do we do this to each other?
Causes questioning of progress:
We seem to have just created better, more efficient ways to kill each other

19. TOTAL, OVERALL EFFECT
Disillusionment: beginnings of the loss of faith we see more profoundly later on. Loss of the foundations of our faith.
Pessimism: hard to feel good about God, people, nature, or the human condition
Cold analysis
Attempt to find something to use as a foundation: the everyday, the common, the physical: things we can be absolutely sure of

20. THE CHALLENGE OF REALISM
Seems simple on surface: observe, report.
It is very difficult to observe accurately
It is very difficult to be unbiased
Most people live in a cloud of fantasy, illusion, and daydreaming: must cut through that.
Takes more skill than it first appears to be accurate, truthful, and objective