Realism

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Realism

• Regionalism Local Color
• 1865-1920

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What is realism?

• Broadly defined, a literary technique devoted to
  "the faithful representation of reality"
• A reaction against romanticism
• Sparked by an interest in the scientific method,
  the systematizing of the study of documentary
  history, and the influence of rational philosophy

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Realist writers

• Endeavored to accurately represent contemporary
  culture and people from all walks of life
• Addressed themes of socioeconomic conflict by
  contrasting the living conditions of the poor
  with those of the upper classes in urban as well
  as rural societies
• Sought to narrate their novels from an objective,
  unbiased perspective that simply and clearly
  represented the factual elements of the story
• Became masters at psychological characterization,
  detailed descriptions of everyday life in
  realistic settings, and dialogue that captures
  the idioms of natural human speech

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Some Key Influences

• Rapid growth after the Civil War
• Increasing rates of democracy and literacy
• Rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization
• An expanding population base due to immigration
• A relative rise in middle-class affluence
• Interest in understanding these rapid shifts in
  culture
• Concern about loss of personal identity

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Local Color/Regional Literature

• Local color or regional literature focuses on the
  characters, dialect, customs, topography, and
  other features particular to a specific region.
• Between the Civil War and the end of the
  nineteenth century, this mode of writing became
  dominant in American literature.

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Local Color

• According to the Oxford Companion to American
  Literature, "In local-color literature one finds
  the dual influence of romanticism and realism,
  since the author frequently looks away from
  ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs,
  or exotic scenes, but retains through minute
  detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of
  description" (439).

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Regional Literature

• Regional literature incorporates the broader
  concept of sectional differences within a locale.
  
• For example, in The Adventures of Huckleberry
  Finn, Mark Twain makes use of seven distinct
  dialects to represent the differences of various
  groups living in the region.

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Impacts

• Contributed to the reunification of the country
  after the Civil War
• Helped build a national identity
• Contributed to the narrative of unified
  nationhood that late nineteenth-century America
  sought to construct

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Regionalism in Art

• Regionalism is a realist modern American art
  movement wherein artists shunned the city and
  rapidly developing technological advances to
  focus on scenes of rural life.
• Regionalist style was at its height from 1930 to
  1935.
• During the Great Depression of the 1930s,
  Regionalist art was widely appreciated for its
  reassuring images of the American heartland.

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We introduced America to Americans."--Roy
Stryker, Regionalist Photographer
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Shared Characteristics in Local Color Regional
Literature

• Setting
• Characters
• Narrator
• Plots
• Themes

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Setting

• The emphasis is frequently on nature and the
  limitations it imposes settings are frequently
  remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral
  to the story and may sometimes become a character
  in itself.

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Characters

• Local color stories tend to be concerned with the
  character of the district or region rather than
  with the individual characters may become
  character types, sometimes quaint or
  stereotypical.
• The characters are marked by their adherence to
  the old ways, by dialect, and by particular
  personality traits central to the region.

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Narrator

• The narrator is typically an educated observer
  from the world beyond who learns something from
  the characters while preserving a sometimes
  sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from them.
  
• The narrator serves as mediator between the rural
  folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom
  the tale is directed.

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Plots

• It has been said that "nothing happens" in local
  color stories by women authors, and often very
  little does happen.
• Stories may include lots of storytelling and
  revolve around the community and its rituals.

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Themes

• Many local color stories share an antipathy to
  change and a nostalgia for an always-past golden
  age. Thematic tension or conflict between urban
  ways and old-fashioned rural values is often
  symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or
  interloper who seeks something from the community.

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Shared Techniques

• Use of dialect to establish credibility and
  authenticity of regional characters.
• Use of detailed description, especially of small,
  seemingly insignificant details central to an
  understanding of the region.
• Frequent use of a frame story in which the
  narrator hears some tale of the region.

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Famous Practitioners

• Mark Twain
• Bret Harte
• Hamlin Garland
• Joel Chandler Harris
• William Faulkner
• William Styron
• Robert Frost
• Sinclair Lewis
• Henry James

• John Steinbeck
• Dashiell Hammett
• Kate Chopin
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Eudora Welty
• Sarah Orne Jewett
• Willa Cather
• Harper Lee

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)

• Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka. Mark Twain, was
  a natural-born storyteller who was the first
  writer to recognize that art could be created out
  of the American language.
• Through his use of carefully chosen words and his
  sharply honed humor, he dealt head-on with
  controversial issues that others were afraid to
  confront.

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Mark Twains Writing Advice

• Whatever you have lived, you can write by
  hard work a genuine apprenticeship, you can
  learn to write well but what you have not lived
  you cannot write, you can only pretend to write
  it...

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An Enormous Noticer

• Mark Twain is described as an enormous noticer.
  Much of what he noticed as a boy growing up in
  the small Mississippi River town of Hannibal,
  Missouri, found its way into his writings in
  books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• He was always noticing whether people had their
  hands in their pockets or not, how they dressed,
  walked, spoke or presented themselves to others.

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Consider this passage from the first chapter of
Tom Sawyer, for example

• A stranger was before him boy a shade larger
  than himself... This boy was well-dressed, too
  well-dressed on a week-day. This was simply
  astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his
  close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and
  natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
  onand it was only Friday. He even wore a
  necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. He had a
  citified air about him that ate into Toms
  vitals.

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Now, close your eyes

• What am I wearing?
• What is currently hanging on the back bulletin
  board?
• What color are the walls in this room?
• How many book shelves are in this room?
• Are there more boys or girls in this class?
• What object is sitting above the white board on
  the left side?

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Twains First Success

• "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
  (1865) was Twains first great success as a
  writer, bringing him national attention.
• In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from
  a bartender at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp,
  California, about the gambler Jim Smiley and his
  celebrated jumping frog.

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How he got started

• Twain began his career as a journalist, travel
  writer, and writer of light, humorous verse.
• He evolved into a chronicler of the vanities,
  hypocrisies. and murderous acts of mankind,
  making frequent use of satire.
• At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined
  rich humor, sturdy narrative and social
  criticism.

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What is satire?

• A literary genre or form in which vices, follies,
  abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule,
  ideally with the intent of shaming individuals,
  and society itself, into improvement.
• Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its
  greater purpose is often constructive social
  criticism, using wit as a weapon.
• A common feature of satire is strong irony or
  sarcasm it also makes frequent use of parody,
  burlesque, analogy, exaggeration, juxtaposition,
  and double entendre.
• Modern Examples Animal Farm Fahrenheit 451
  Lord of the Flies Saturday Night Live,
  Doonesbury, John Stewart Stephen Colbert The
  Simpsons South Park

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Twain on Humor

• Humor must not professedly teach, and it must
  not professedly preach, but it must do both if it
  would live forever.
• Mark Twain

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Most Famous Books

• The Innocents Abroad
• Roughing It
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• The Prince and the Pauper
• Life on the Mississippi

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court
• The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson
• A Burlesque Autobiography

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a prequel to
Huckleberry Finn
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Twains Use of Dialect

• Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech
  and helped to create and popularize a distinctive
  American literature built on American themes and
  language.
• In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses
  seven different dialects and even provides an
  explanation for doing so

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Twains EXPLANATORY

• IN this book a number of dialects are used, to
  wit  the Missouri negro dialect the extremest
  form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect the
  ordinary "Pike County" dialect and four modified
  varieties of this last. The shadings have not
  been done in a haphazard fashion, or by
  guesswork but painstakingly, and with the
  trustworthy guidance and support of personal
  familiarity with these several forms of speech.
• I make this explanation for the reason that
  without it many readers would suppose that all
  these characters were trying to talk alike and
  not succeeding.

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Missouri Negro Jim

• Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you
  ain dead-you aint drownded-yous back agin?
  Its too good for true, honey, its too good for
  true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o you.
  No, you ain dead! yous back agin, live en
  soun, jis de same ole Huck-de same ole Huck,
  thanks to goodness!

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Extremist form of the backwoods Southwestern
dialect Arkansas Gossips (Sister Hotchkiss)

• Look at that-air grindstone, sI want to tell
  met any cretur ts in his right minds a-goin
  to scrabble all them crazy things onto a
  grindstone? sI.

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Ordinary Pike County Huck

• My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri,
  where I was born, and they all died off but me
  and pa and my brother Ike.

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Modified Pike County King

• Well, Id ben a-runnin a little temperence
  revival thar bout a week . . . and business
  a-growin all the time, when somehow or another a
  little report got around last night that I had a
  way of puttin in my time with a private jug on
  the sly.

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Huck as Narrator

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a
  breakthrough in American literature for its
  presentation of Huck Finn, an adolescent boy who
  tells the story in his own language. The novel
  was one of the first in America to employ the
  child's perspective and employ the vernacular a
  language specific to a region or group of
  peoplethroughout the book.

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Unique Perspective

• Huck's unique perspective is that of a
  lower-class, southern white child, who has been
  viewed as an outcast by society.
• From this position, Huck narrates the story of
  his encounters with various southern types,
  sometimes revealing his naivete and, at other
  times, his acute ability to see through the
  hypocrisy of his elders.

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• Realist and Regionalist techniques are
  exemplified in The Adventures of
  Huckleberry Finn by the specific and richly
  detailed setting

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• and the novel's insistence on dialect which
  attempts to reproduce the natural speech of a
  variety of characters unique to the Mississippi
  Valley region.

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• In addition, Huck's momentous decision to free
  Jim, even if it means going to hell, is seen as a
  classic episode of Realist fiction because it
  demonstrates the individual's struggle to make
  choices based on inner motivations, rather than
  outside forces.

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Twains Warning
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Many wonder if he really meant that since Huck
goes through a major metamorphosis in his
thinking about Jim
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On Race

• I have no race prejudices, and I think I have
  no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor
  creed prejudices. Indeed I know it... All that I
  care to know is that a man is a human being
  that is enough for me.
• Mark Twain

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Early Experiences

• Black people and black voices were part of
  Twains life from the beginning. Every summer as
  a child Sam spent several weeks on his uncles
  farm, where an old slave called Uncle Daniel
  thrilled the youngsters with ghost stories.
• One of his most lasting childhood memories was
  not so pleasant. It was of a dozen men and women,
  chained together, waiting to be shipped
  down-river to the slave market. They had, he
  said, the saddest faces I ever saw.

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Controversy/Book Banning

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first
  published in 1884, was controversial from the
  start. In 1885, Concord Public Library banned the
  book.
• Mark Twain wrote to Charles Webster on March 18,
  1885 "The Committee of the Public Library of
  Concord, Mass., have given us a rattling tip-top
  puff which will go into every paper in the
  country. They have expelled Huck from their
  library as 'trash and suitable only for the
  slums.' That will sell 25,000 copies for us sure."

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• In 1902, the Brooklyn Public Library banned The
  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the statement
  that "Huck not only itched but he scratched," and
  that he said "sweat" when he should have said
  "perspiration."

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Modern Day Issues

• In general, the debate over Twain's The
  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has centered
  around the language of the book, which has been
  objected to on social grounds, specifically for
  its repeated use of the N word, which was in
  common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which
  the novel was set.
• Yielding to public pressure, some textbook
  publishers have substituted "slave" or "servant"
  for the term that Mark Twain uses in the book,
  which has been considered derogatory to African
  Americans.

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The N Word

• Comes from the Latin adjective meaning black
  (niger) and the Spanish/Portuguese word for black
  (negro)
• Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or
  seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism,
  or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn't
  matter. Negroes do not like it in any book or
  play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so
  sympathetic in its treatment of the basic
  problems of the race. Even though the book or
  play is written by a Negro, they still do not
  like it. The word nigger, you see, sums up for us
  who are colored all the bitter years of insult
  and struggle in America.
• - Langston Hughes

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Others see it as the greatest and most important
American novel

• "All modern American literature comes from one
  book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
• - Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa