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The age of realism (1865-1915) - Coggle Diagram
The age of realism (1865-1915)
Introduction
Civil War : transformed into a modern nation > victory of the North = that of industrialism > impacts on life : dev of communication, immigration
new ideology of success represented by the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia or the Columbian Exposition (1893) = Gilded Age
But authors shed light on the intoxicating power of money > last two decades were the golden age of American capitalist potentates (P.Morgan, Rockfeller, Carnegie)> accumulation, linked to corruption was denounced by Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of Leisure Class
discontent with the nation led to utopianism for some writers : Edward Bellamy-Looking Backward > then naturalism
also voices expressing the recognition of communities > beginning of segregation
Poetry
not centered on introspection > Emily Dickinson : led the life of a recluse/ brought in a religious family = influence in her poetry > poems that are original : short lines + dashes of different lengths = pause + sense of dislocation / elliptical language, unusual metaphors = believed in waywardness of life / use of wit, colloquial language = indebtedness to Metaphysical poetry
Paul Laurence Dunbar : antebellum, Negro dialect
Fiction
dev of regional writing = variety and energy to American fiction >> local color writing : portrayal of a particular region, detailed representation of the particularities but sometimes included elements of romance > Hamlin Garland : pictured the bitter lives of rural farmers = sort of reaction / often sketches or short stories published in the magazines
In South : lamentation on the loss of the antebellum plantation life > Kate Chopin : pictured Creole life, showing undercurrents of passion and racism under the civilized façade > The Awakening = scandale / Joel Chandler Harris : popular with the tales of Uncle Remus > to preserve Negro folk literature with native legends
New England : focused on rural world > Sarah Orme Jewett : stories about remote farms and fishing towns
The West : contributed the most > Bret Harte : frontier life, unite realism, sentimentality and melodramatic stories / Owen Wister : western novels = cowboy romances
Willa Cather : wrote about the frontier, celebrating the courage of pioneers > often contrasts the human values of the past and the mercantilism of the present > My Antonia
Samuel Clemens = Mark Twain > made the American regionalist novel famous > often wrote tall tales and humorous frontier stories > apogee = the Adventures of Tom Sawyer + The Adventures of Huckberry Finn : picaresque journey / Mississippi = mythic wilderness / also novel of initiation = Twain on the side of chlidren, innocence contrasting with hypocrisy > prose that relies on slang, black dialect = not conventional
Ambrose Pierce : denounced the realities of Civil War with cynicism and brutality / tradition of Poe : mental unbalance and uncanny occurrences > Devil's Dictionary : ridiculed political doublespeak and absurdity
Psychological Realism : the expatriates
attraction of London and Paris > some writers turned their backs to the materialism of American society
Henry James : became British citizen in 1915 > found in Europe refined manners, cultural sophistication > novels that develop international theme, heroes innocent and discovering the Old World, becoming corrupted / The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl : convey complexity of consciousness and appearance in a deceptive world > convoluted style, long running metaphors, rejected omniscient narrator for third-person narrators as centres of consciousness = psychological realism
Edit Wharton : cosmopolitan p.view, friend of James > often wrote on manners of society, fascination for its outward signs / also sensitive about how the conventions could frustrate woman's life (The House of Mirth/The Age of Innocence)
Naturalism
William Dean Howells : defended the cause of realism and helped the writers to publish their works > defined realism as honesty and 'truthful treatment of material' > was to be challenged by naturalism
Henry Adams : not naturalist, but interested in the forces that make history > autobiography : Education of Henry Adams, searching for sense but only finding désillusion = bitter voice
Naturalism : applies the principles of determinism > men controlled by inner forces, as animals / focuses on the scientific laws which explain actions / naturalistic novels are pessimistic - novelists are like scientists > common features : violence, excess and sensationalism
Franck Norris : unite naturalism and truth (romance)> terrible dramas that often take place in the lowest classes= a school by itself > McTeague / wrote a trilogy of wheat : The Pit, The octopus, The Wolf
Stephen Crane : wanted to show that readers were governed by sex, violence and death > novels that depict lives ruled by chance and determinism in which religion or justice play no part > The Red Badge of Courage : realistic novel, first unromanticised account of the Civil War