American Realism 18651920 approximately

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American Realism1865-1920 (approximately)
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What is Realism?

• A faithful representation of reality in
  literature.
• Emphasis on development of believable characters.
• Written in natural vernacular (regular everyday
  speech), or dialect.

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Realism - Characteristics

• objective writing about ordinary characters in
  ordinary situations real life
• 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 reasonable
  relation to nature, to each other, to their
  social class, to their own past.

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• The frontier was about to close and the
  safety valve was ceasing to operate, a
  reexamination of life began. Beneath the
  glittering surface of prospective there lay
  suffering and unhappiness, disillusionment and
  frustration were widely felt.
• The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was
  by and large over. Meanwhile younger writers
  appeared on the scene, which means the coming of
  new literary age, American realism.

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Realist Writers

• Mark Twain
• William Dean Howells
• Henry James
• Edgar Lee Masters
• Jack London
• Edwin Arlington Robinson
• Kate Chopin

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Why did Realism develop?

• The Civil War and the brutality it revealed
  (theres nothing romantic about that)
• The urbanization and industrialization of America
• As a reaction to Romanticism
• Increasing rates of democracy and literacy
• The emerging middle class
• Upheaval and social change in the latter half of
  the 19th century