The Rise of Realism

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The Rise of Realism

• The Civil War and Postwar Period
• 1850-1900

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A Clash of Ideals

• Both the North and the South were motivated by a
  combination of ideology and economic necessity.
• Northerners fought to end slavery and to preserve
  the constitutional Union of the founders.

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• Southerners fought to uphold states rights and
  to defend the Southern way of life.
• Both sides fought to protect their economic
  interests.

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• Ralph Waldo Emerson had for decades warned that
  this day would come if slavery were not abolished.

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Snapshot from the Civil War

• Because rifle balls often shattered bones,
  doctors were usually forced to amputate wounded
  soldiers arms or legs, often piling the limbs up
  on a cart outside the surgeons tent. Ignorant
  of hygienic science, surgeons frequently honed
  their scalpels on the soles of their boots, so
  infections in the field hospitals ran rampant.
  Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin
  until 1928, minor wounds could often prove deadly.

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Eyes on the War

• During the American Civil War, photographs were
  the closest thing to newscasts. As a result, the
  Civil War became the first war to be fully
  documented in pictures.

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After the Civil War, Walt Whitman predicted that
a great literature willarise out of the era of
those four years.
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There was little literary output during the war
since then, however, it has generated over sixty
thousands books and articles, written by scholars
and historians, making it one of the most
written-about wars in history.
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• The American Civil War ( 1861-1865) resulted in
  terrible blood-shed as the national government
  sought to preserve the Union by ending the
  secession of Southern states.
• Despite his firsthand experience of the aftermath
  of battle, Walt Whitman and other notable writers
  retained an optimistic view of the American
  character.
• However, the horrors of war merely reinforced the
  pessimism of many American writers like Herman
  Melville, Ambrose Pierce, and Stephen Crane.

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• Very little important poetry and fiction issued
  directly from the Civil War, largely because few
  major American writers experienced the war
  firsthand.
• Direct accounts of the war found their way into
  other types of literature ( letters, diaries, and
  etc.).
• The real war would not find a place in American
  fiction until the development of the realist
  novel.

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What is realistic literature?

• A style of writing, developed in the 19th
  century, that attempts to depict life accurately
  without idealizing or romanticizing it.

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Local Color

• Fiction and poetry that focuses on the
  characters dialect, customs, topography, and
  other features particular to a specific region.

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Smiling Realism

• A portrayal of an America where people may act
  foolishly, but where their good qualities
  eventually win out.
• Mark Twain provides an excellent example of a
  smiling realist.

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Naturalism 1865-1900

• A literary movement that is a stem of realism.
• Naturalists believed that ones heredity and
  social environment determined ones character.
• Naturalism attempts to determine scientifically
  the underlying forces influencing the actions of
  its subjects.