American_Realism(详细).pptVIP

American Realism Background Three conflicts between: Economically: the agrarian ideal vs the industrial ideal Politically: the plantation gentility of the South and the commercial gentility of the North Culturally: the culturally mature East and the raw and expanding West. The Civil War (1861-1865) “The Gilded Age” Realism American Realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against Romanticism. It stresses truthful treatment of material. It focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people, and emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. The three dominant figures of the period are William Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. William Dean Howells (1837-1920): The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) (1862-1910) Henry James (1843-1916) Local Colorism Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s. It is a variation of American literary realism. Generally, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. Mark Twain is a local colorist. Mark Twain Twain preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. So the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the west became his major theme. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896): Uncle Tome’s Cabin Hamlin Garland (1860-1940): Main-