American Literature

030533/4/5, 31030533/4/5, 31stst Oct. 2006 Oct. 2006

The American Realism(I)

(1865 - 1918)

Lecture Six

1. The reasons for the coming of American realism:

1) The Civil War which broke out in 1861 taught men that life was not so good, man was not and God was not. The war marked a change, in the quality of American life, a deterioration, in fact, of American moral values. It led people to question the assumptions: natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God.

2) In post-bellum America increasing industrialization and mechanization of the country in full swing produced soon extremes of wealth and poverty. Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few “captains of industry” or “robber barons”, but life for the millions was fast becoming a veritable struggle for survival.

I. Introduction

3) 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.

4) The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. Meanwhile younger writers appeared on the scene, such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and so on, which means the coming of new literary age, American realism.

2. What is American realism?

1) As a literary movement realism came in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a reaction against “the lie” of romanticism and sentimentalism. It expressed the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.

2) The American realists advocated “verisimilitude of detail derived from observation,” the effort to approach the norm of experience —— a reliance on the representative in plot, setting, and character, and to offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience.

3. The schools of American Realism:1) Frontier Humor

2) Midwestern realism

3) Cosmopolitan Novelist

4) Regionalism (local color)

5) Naturalism

6) The Chicago School of poets

7) The rise of black American literature

It is the vital and exuberant literature that was generated by the westward expansion of the United States in the late 18th and the 19th centuries.

The spontaneity, sense of fun, exaggeration, fierce individuality, and irreverence for traditional Eastern values in frontier humor reflect the optimistic spirit of pre-Civil War America.

Frontier humor appears mainly in tall tales of exaggerated feats of strength, rough practical jokes (especially on sophisticated Easterners and greenhorns), and tales of encounters with panthers, bears, and snakes. These tales are filled with rough, homely wisdom.

II. Frontier Humor

It just refers to William Dean Howells’s realism because he came from the American midwest and carefully interweaved the life and emotions of ordinary middle-class there in his works.

Also because he was the champion of realism, having helped to publish many realistic local color writings by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, and others.

III. Midwestern Realism

William Dean Howells(1837 - 1920)

1. About the author:1) Howells, the second son of eight children, had little formal

education. Working as a typesetter and a printer's apprentice, he educated himself through intensive reading and the study of Spanish, French, Latin, and German.

2) His campaign biography for Abraham Lincoln earned him enough money to travel to New England and meet the great literary figures of the day, and the post of U. S. Consul to Venice from 1861 to 1865.

3) As editor and critic Howells was generous in constructive and sympathetic reviews, helping younger and more radical writers to get a hearing by encouraging many others from Henry James to Bret Harte and Frank Norris to Mark Twain.

4) He was, for several decades, the dean of his country’s literature and became the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1907.

5) He supported socialism and opposed American imperialism.

2. His literary-aesthetic ideas:

1) He defines realism as “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”, as a quest of the average and the habitual rather than the exceptional or the uniquely high or low.

2) To him realism is not mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with motives and psychological conflicts. So the main line of development in the novel is not from Dickens and Thackeray but from the psychological analysis of Hawthorne and George Eliot to James.

3) In his eyes truth is the highest beauty, but truth includes the view that morality penetrates all things.

4) A free and simple design where event follows event without the fettering control of intrigue, but where all grows naturally out of character and conditions, is the supreme form of fiction.

5) Writers should winnow tradition and write in keeping with current humanitarian ideals.

6) The literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification.

3. His Works: Although he wrote over a hundred books in various genres,

including novels, poems, literary criticism, plays, memoirs, and travel narratives, Howells is best known today for his realistic fiction, including

1) A Modern Instance (1881), on the then-new topic of the social consequences of divorce

2) The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), his best-known work and one of the first novels to study the American businessman

3) A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), an exploration of cosmopolitan life in New York City as seen through the eyes of Basil and Isabel March, the protagonists of Their Wedding Journey (1871) and other works. 

His masterpiece: The Rise of Silas Lapham

1) A fine specimen of American realistic writing. There is nothing heroic, dramatic or extraordinary. Howells is here so devoted to the small, the trivial, and the commonplace.

2) He has always emphasized on ethics. He stresses the need for sympathy and moral integrity, and the need for different social classes to harmoniously adapt to their environment and to one another.

3) Howells did not approve of competitive economic individualism. He was convinced that laissez-faire competition had proved the rapacity of man .

Henry James ‘s fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, the international theme, that is the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with cosmopolitan European decadence, and the moral and psychological complications arising therefrom. So he was called the cosmopolitan novelist.

IV. Cosmopolitan Novelist

Henry James(1843 - 1916)

1. Brief account of his life:

1) He was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His father was an eminent philosopher and reformer, and his brother, William James, was to e the famous philosopher and psychologist.

2) Most of his life he settled down in Europe except of some visits to America. In 1915 he became the naturalized British citizen. He was not married but once loved his attractive cousin who died young.

3) A voluminous writer, he was influenced by some English, European and American writers. One American author who exerted a measure of influence on James is Hawthorne whose insight into the human psyche impressed the younger writer deeply.

2. His creative life The first period(1865-1882). The works in this period reveal

James’ fascination with his “international theme”

1) The American

2) Daisy Miller

3) The Portrait of a Lady The second period (1882-1895). During this time he focuses on

tales and plays, but most of them prove a failure. The last one(1895-1909)

1) A few novellas and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence.

2) In the major phase of his career he returned to his old ground. He completed his trilogies (the summit of his art): The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl

3. His literary-aesthetic ideas （ see his The Art of Fiction ）

1) Art must be related to life. It must be life transformed and changed so that the art form would give the truthful impression of actuality.

2) Though closely related to life, art is important in its own way. It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.

3) He was concerned with point of view which is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel.

4. His political-social ideas and attitudes:

1) The spokesman of the wealthy.

2) Be conservative toward overzealous reformers(the similar way of Hawthorne)

3) But he was critical of U.S. imperialist behavior and American’s obsession with business, its extremes of wealth and poverty, its lack of culture and sophistication.

4) Like Hawthorne, James regarded evil as essentially of inward cause and cure, advocated free willed renunciation of the low or mean, and repeatedly emphasized magnanimity and the beauty of goodness.

Homework:1. Please read Mark Twin’s masterpiece

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and introduce it’s major themes to the class.