1. The Civil War and Postwar Period
The Civil War and Postwar Period

2. Causes for Civil War
A variety of economic, political, and social differences between the North and South. Slavery was the core reason for the war.
South needed a work force for exports
South also needed the industrial North
North regarded the Fed. Govt. as authority
South championed states’ rights.

3. Civil War begins w/Conf. attack on Fort Sumter
North
Free Slaves
Preserve the Constitutional Union
South
States’ rights
Southern way of life

4. Historical Highlights
The C.W. results in the deaths of over 600,000
Slavery abolished in 1865
Lincoln assassinated on April 14, 1865
Technology advanced with the invention of the telephone(1876), phonograph(1877), and the electric light bulb (1879)

5. Literary Highlights
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin – motivates the Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography (1855) – fuels the antislavery cause
Walt Whitman publishes his first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855

6. Literary Highlights The literary movement of realism takes shape
Emily Dickinson dies in 1886 – her poems are published after her death

7. Response to war Idealism vs. Disillusionment
What gave one writer optimism during this time gave another author pessimism.
Whitman found heroism and a strength in the lives of the CW soldiers – witnessed the war first hand
Melville stripped human nature bare and displayed humanity’s basic evil.

8. War experience Few American writers experienced the war firsthand.
Emerson stayed in Concord “knitting mittens”
Thoreau (for Abolition) died in 1862
Hawthorne died in 1864
Dickinson stayed in her attic in Amherst
Howell, James, and Adams were abroad

9. Realism
Dominated American fiction from the late 19th to the early 20th century.
Realists sought to accurately portray real life without filtering it through personal feelings, romanticism, or idealism.

10. New Generation of Writers
Subjects came from the slums of cities
Factories replaced farmland
Corrupt politicians
Prostitutes

11. Roots of Realism – Europe Found in the following writers
Daniel Defoe
George Eliot
Anthony Trollope
Honore de Balzac
Stendhal
Gustave Flaubert
Leo Tolstoy

12. Realistic Novel
The Red Badge of Courage was written by a man who was born six years after the Civil War ended. – Stephen Crane
The American Romantics held an aversion for Realism
The Realist writers emerged after the Civil War

13. The Realist Novel
Realism was used to explain why ordinary people behave the way they do.
Subject matter relied on emerging sciences of human and animal behavior
Biology
Psychology
Sociology

14. Realism = Regionalism
Regionalism was literature that emphasized a specific geographical setting and made use of the speech and mannerisms of the people in that region.
Regionalism = Local Color

15. Regionalists Sarah Orne Jewett – Maine Kate Chopin – Louisiana
Harriet Beecher Stowe – New England
Bret Harte – The West
Mark Twain – Mississippi River Valley

16. Mark Twain is the best –known example as a regional writer
Mark Twain is the best –known example as a regional writer. He was first known as a regional humorist and then evolved into a writer of comic view of society with satiric qualities.
His best novel, Huck Finn, describes the moral growth of a comic character. In an environment that is at the same time physically beautiful and morally repugnant.

17. Realism vs. Naturalism An extension of realism.
Naturalists relied heavily on psychology and sociology – tended to dissect human behavior.
Influenced by Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest
Outstanding naturalists – Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris

18. Psychological Fiction
Henry James is considered America’s greatest writer of this type of novel.
Concentrated on the distinctions in character motivation.