美国文学吴伟仁2.pptVIP

Part IV The literature of Realism(1865-1918) I. Historical Introduction: the civil war brought about 2 results: 1. Further industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, development of transportation and communication. 2. Westward movement, Homestead Act, by 1890, the last of the first 48 states were settled. II. Literary Characteristics 1. Feminist movement. Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather. 2. Decline of American Romanticism, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. 3. Appearance of American realism 4. Appearance of American naturalism. American Realism(1870-1890) 1. Reasons: civil war, social development. People sought to describe the wide range of American experience and to present the subtleties of human personality, to portray characters who were less simply all good or all bad. 2. Realism originated in France. A literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. 3. American realism, different from European realism, is more varied and individualistic. American Realism 4. Development of American realism: first appear in the literature of local color, arbiter: William Dean Howells. He defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”. 5. Important writers: Henry James, Mark Twain. Realism a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. The term refers, both to a literary method based on detailed accuracy of description and to a more general attitude that rejects idealization, escapism, and other extravagant qualities of romance in favor of recognizing soberly the actual problems of life. Realism is not a direct or simple reproduction of reality but a system of conventions producing a lifelike illusion of some real world outside the text, by processes of selection, exclusion, description or manners of addressing the reader. American Naturalism: pessimist