REALISM 1860-1910

Where We Came FromPrevious Literary Movements Literature of Puritanism – Work Ethic Literature of the Revolutionary Period

American Dream The Melting Pot Basic rights of man Emergence of the Other (women, native people, African

Americans) Literary Nationalism 1800-1840

Nationalism (excessive pride) Self identity Self examination and criticism Begins real American literature Respected in Europe Professional writers

ROMANTICISM Extraordinary people in

extraordinary situations Truth in absolutes predicated on

stereotypes Stress on past (Greek

Classical period) Treats subjects

emotionally Celebration of artists Probe to exaggeration Nature glorified Belief in afterlife

Authors Literary Nationalism Fireside Poets Romantics

TRANSCENDENTALISM• Truth = communion

with God in nature• Belief in individualism• Rejects institutions• Emphasis on simplicity• Importance of

experience• "majority of one"• "self-reliance"• "man thinking“• Non-conformity• language and style

influenced by Romanticism

Authors• Ralph Waldo Emerson• Henry David Thoreau

ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM Belief in the potential

destructiveness of the human spirit

Belief in individual truths, but no universal truths, and the truths of existence are deceitful and disturbing

Evil is an active force in the universe

Focus on the man’s uncertainty and limitations in the universe

Nature = indifferent to mankind

Human nature = hypocritical, apathetic

Authors Herman Melville Edgar Alan Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne

What Comes Next?

If we accept the pendulum theory of history (that every period moves to its opposite extreme), what type of voice can you predict reacts to the Romantic Period?

The Agnew Clinic

Thomas Eakins 1889

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Emanuel Leutze 1851

Sectionalism, Industrialism and Literary Regionalism In 1858, Abraham Lincoln had warned his

countryman “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Events in the dark winter of 1860-1861 would prove him correct

After Lincoln’s minority election to the presidency: South Carolina would vote to secede from the Union

in December 1860 Six other states of the Deep South quickly followed

suit When Confederate troops successfully attacked Fort

Sumter in Charleston harbor , Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina elected to join their fellows in defense of slavery and the sovereign principles of states’ rights

Cost of the Civil War

Cost of the Civil War The Human Cost

1,094,543 Casualties The North lost one out of ten

110,100 in battle 224,580 to disease

The South lost one out of four 94,000 in battle 64,000 to disease

Two percent of US population died in the Civil War, with only WWII claiming more lives;

Economic Cost Estimated at 6.6 billion, which would be 165 billion

today

Historical Overview

While an older generation of historians tended to view the Civil War as the watershed of modern American nationalism (calling it “the second American Revolution), more recent historians suggest that the real factors that determined the future of the nation were the facts that: The country was still badly fragmented after the

war Congress did little to address this and other

problems

Historic Overview

And even though the language of the Constitution itself was amended to affirm an expanded – that is, colorblind – definition of individual rights and liberties, meaningful implementation of that vision for African Americans would have to wait for almost another century

Historical Overview

At the same time, however, the war did unleash a range of social and economic forces that, eventually, would radically transform American life: The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 set aside vast

tracts of land in the West to finance the construction of a transcontinental railroad

The Homestead Act of 1862 enabled yeoman farmers to have cheaper access to government-held land

The Morril Act of 1862 established Federal support for agricultural colleges

Historical Overview

Mobilization for war on such an unprecedented scale also had unforeseen effect on American life:

The need to achieve organizational efficiency in both military and civilian branches of government gave rise to an almost wholly new group of managers able to transfer their increasingly professional skills to the business world after the war.

Historical Overview

As an example: Keeping thousands of men in uniform required an entirely new approach to apparel manufacturing.

At the start of the war, when almost all of the troops came from volunteer contingents of various state militias, mothers, wives and daughters would have sewed individual uniforms at home.

Before long, however, the need for additional soldiers made the draft inevitable. The unprecedented demand for huge numbers of identical trousers, jackets, boots, and other mainstays of military regimentation sparked the rapid modernization of the clothing industry by introducing “standard” apparel sizes.

The federal government was the first consumer to make its purchases off the rack.

Take that Old Navy!

Historical Overview

These new concepts of scale, efficiency, and organizational complexity would eventually make possible what one influential historian referred to as “the incorporation of American” – or the way we live now.

Politically, the goal of securing equal rights for freed slaves largely failed.

Likewise, failure to integrate the high-minded ideals of New England into effective public policy also proved a crucial turning point in America’s intellectual history

Historical Context

Indeed the period following the Civil War was marked by an affronting sense of the hard realities of life and the more sobering aspects of the human experience.

By the End of the Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment had

abolished slavery The industrial North had defeated the agrarian South Social order grew based on mass labor and mass consumption;

Steam power replaced water power Machines replaced hand labor Extreme contrast between the rich and poor (the Gilded Age)

The Industrial Revolution had begun

Historic Overview

Migration westward expanded the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific Native American populations displaced and

subjugated; Growth of Industry

Steelmaking, the nation’s dominant industry Alternating electrical current (1886) American petroleum industry begins

Growth of population Total population doubled from 1870 to 1890 National income quadrupled Gap between rich and poor widened

Historic Overview

The Effects of the Industrial Revolution: Migration from rural to urban areas Independent, skilled workers replaced by semi-skilled laborers; Large corporations were established, devaluing the personal relationship

between management and workers or company and customers.

Mass Communication and Migration Coast-to-coast communication

Pony Express (1860)—10 daysTelegraph (1861)—just seconds to communicate across countryTransatlantic telegraph cable (1866) allowed instant communication with Europe

Telephone patented (1867)By 1900, 1.3 million telephones in U.S.

Coast-to-coast travelTranscontinental Railroad (1869)By 1889, coast-to-coast travel—4 days

Citizens witnessed the entirety of there country and grew curious for more

Photography and Realism

The invention ignited an artistic and scientific frenzy…

Best portrait makers could bring out the very human essence of a subject…

The advantages of photography: immediacy, reliable representation, low cost, etc…

Massive social changes reflected in literature & photography.

1861-65 - Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner: honest photographic record of the Civil War.

Photography, like literary Realism and Regionalism showed TRUTH.

Historic Overview

Intellectual Revolution: Changes in Thinking brought about by Changes in Society Changes in science

Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species Changes in psychology

Sigmund Freud - unconscious system of ideas that governs human reactions and response

Changes in philosophy Karl Marx - human history as the result of class

struggles (The Communist Manifesto) William James – American pragmatism – truth is:

tested by its usefulness or practical consequences a commodity accessible on the surface of things perceptible to the senses and verifiable through

experience

Historical Overview

During this period, America’s literary traditions also shifted. By the time Lee surrendered at Appomattox, his army’s ranks were severely depleted, and the same was true of the roll call of American authorship. Washington Irving, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne had died. Herman Melville was in professional exile and Ralph Waldo Emerson had published his last book.

The nation now looked to new literary voices whose accents were not always so comforting. The cultural supremacy of New England, so long taken for granted was now open to challenge.

Historical Overview

In essence: The experience of war had expanded

American awareness of its boundaries, physical, emotional, and spiritual.

The world of the naive, innocent, optimistic, and contained past appeared hopelessly outdated and absurdly idealistic.

America enters adulthood: Realism is born

Realism

““Nothing more and nothing less Nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of than the truthful treatment of

material.”material.”

William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells

Historical Overview: Realism As the novelist Henry James

had occasion to observe in 1879, “…the Civil War marks an era in the history of the American mind. It introduced into the national consciousness a certain sense of proportion and relation, of the world being a more complicated place than it had hitherto seemed, the future more treacherous, success more difficult. At the rate at which things are going, it is obvious that good Americans will be more numerous than ever; but the good American, in the days to come, will be a more critical person than his complacent and confident grandfather. He has eaten of the tree of knowledge.”

A Powerful Reaction Against Romanticism

The Civil War and the social, political, and cultural events following the war created an environment that demanded a literary voice that honored that experience. Romanticism with his dreamy, optimistic, and highly emotional emphasis proved false in light of the turmoil of the period.

This voice would serve as a reaction against Romanticism rejected heroic, adventurous, or

unfamiliar subjects Note the unmistakable mocking

treatment of Romantic ideals - Emmeline, Tom, and the traditions of the South in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

Authors sought to portray life as they saw it, insisting that the ordinary and local were just as suitable for art as the sublime.

““Nothing more and nothing less than the Nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.”truthful treatment of material.”

William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells

From these social changes come two literary movements Realism,

first begun as the local color movement

Includes regionalism The tall tale

Naturalism

Realism Denotation – a literary

movement that developed towards the end of the Civil War and stressed the actual (reality) as opposed to the imagined or fanciful

Begins in France, as realisme, a literary doctrine calling for “reality and truth in the depiction of ordinary life.” Grounded in the belief

that there is an objective reality which can be portrayed with truth and accuracy as the goal;

The writer does not select facts in accord with preconceived ideals, but rather sets down observations impartially and objectively.

Characteristics of Realism Subject matter—ordinary people and events; Purpose—Verisimilitude, the truthful representation of life; Point of View—omniscient and objective Characters—middle class, psychological realism

Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class.

Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.

Focus away from New England and other intellectual centers and out to the Midwest and West (regionalism)

Plot de-emphasized Focus on everyday life Complex ethical choices often the subject

(“I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.”)

Events are made to seem the inevitable result of characters’ choices (“Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I

been there before. ”)

Characteristics of Realism, cont... Subject matter drawn from “our

experience” – the common, the ordinary, the probable

Focuses on the norm of daily experience – dialect, geography, regional manners.

Romance and Realism: Taste and ClassRomance Aspired to the ideal Thought to be more

genteel since it did not show the vulgar details of life

Harks back to the noble past

Emotional

Realism Thought to be more

democratic Critics stressed the

potential for vulgarity and its emphasis on the commonplace

Potential “poison” for the pure of mind

Exists in the unfiltered present

Neutral (observant)

Themes in Realism

Humans control their destinies characters act on their environment rather than

simply reacting to it. Slice-of-life technique

often ends without traditional formal closure, leaving much untold to suggest man’s limited ability to make sense of his life.

Pragmatism Social Criticism Importance of place--regionalism, "local

color" Sociology and psychology Rejection of Romanticism

Defining Strain

VOICE: the tonal qualities, attitudes, or entire personality of a speaker as revealed directly or indirectly through sound, diction, and other stylistic devices

"Voice reminds us that a human being is behind the words of a poem, that he is revealing his individuality by means of the poem, and that this revelation may be the most significant part of what we receive from the poem."

Huckleberry Finn and Realism Published in 1885 Set in pre-Civil War years (40-50

years before publication) Slavery ended, but racism still

rampant (Jim Crow Laws) Mark Twain, a Southerner,

undergoes moral transformation. Suggestion (via Ken Burns’s American Voices) is that this transformation sprung from a trip along the river years after Twain left the South. Here, along the shore of his beloved river, Twain witnessed the great failings of Reconstruction and the ubiquity of Jim Crow (a new slavery).

The impression stuck with him.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a

COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL: moral growth of a comic character in an physically beautiful yet morally repugnant setting

PICARESQUE NOVEL: typically satirical story that illustrates with realistic and witty detail the adventures of a roguish hero of lower social standing who lives by their common sense in a corrupt society.

Huckleberry Finn as a Literary Milestone

“Something new happened in Huck Finn that had never happened in American literature before. It was a book…that served as a Declaration of Independence from the genteel English novel…

…[It] allowed a different kind of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthly vernacular…it was a book that talked. Huck’s voice, combined with Twain’s satiric genius, changed the shape of fiction in America, and African-American voices had a great deal to do with making it what it was.”

- Dr. Shelley Fishkin, 1995

The Linch Pin Between the Movements Linch Pin - "something [or someone] that

holds the various elements of a complicated structure together."

The transition between two contrasting movements can be clearly identified in one man, Walt Whitman, who incorporating both views in his works

Walt Whitman: America’s Poet

• His poetry celebrated...o The individualo common mano American democracyo American industryo American ingenuityo mystery of existence (not

to be feared, but embraced)  

o The body and its functions• He was

• A humanist• A teacher • An optimist• Supporter of the Union• Among the most influential

poets in the American canon

• Highly controversial• Gay

And your very flesh shall be a great poem

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Be curious, not judgmental

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

Walt Whitman, cont…

• Leaves of Grass (1855): collection of poems; attempt to reach common person through an American epic

• "Father of Free Verse" -- sought to capture America's voice through his poetry

  Whitman created new poetic forms

and subjects to fashion a distinctly American type of poetic expression.

He rejected conventional themes, traditional literary references, allusions, and rhyme—all the accepted forms of poetry in the 19th century.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people."

Whitman’s Themes

Transcendent power of love, brotherhood, and comradeship

Imaginative projection into others’ lives

Optimistic faith in democracy and equality

Nature and return Belief in regenerative and

illustrative powers of nature and its value as a teacher

Equivalence of body and soul and the unabashed exaltation of the body and sexuality

Whitman’s Poetic TechniquesWhitman declared his poetry would

have: Long lines that capture the

rhythms of natural speech. Free verse = = lack of metrical

regularity and conventional rhyme

Vocabulary drawn from everyday speech.

A base in reality, not morality.

Exception: “O Captain My Captain”

Written on the passing of Abraham Lincoln

Traditional Forms Traditional Subject Invoked in the last scene of

Dead Poet’s Society – (boys on desk upon seeing their “captain” and his passing)

Use of repeated images, symbols, phrases, and grammatical units

Use of enumerations and catalogs

Use of anaphora (initial repetition) in lines and “Epanaphora” (each line hangs by a loop from the line before it)

Contrast and parallelism in paired lines

Whitman’s Use of Language

Idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation. Words used for their sounds as much as

their sense; foreign languages Use of language from several disciplines The sciences: anatomy, astronomy,

botany (especially the flora and fauna of America)

Businesses and professions, such as carpentry

Military and war terms; nautical terms

What’s So Shocking about the “Good Grey Poet” Why were so many writers shocked by

Whitman? His lack of regular rhyme and meter

(free verse) and nontraditional poetic style and subject matter shocked more traditional writers.

He also wrote poetry with unabashedly sexual imagery and themes, some of them homoerotic. Examples include the Calamus poems and “I Sing the Body Electric.”

Whitman’s Influence

Along with Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman stands as one of two giants of American poetry in the nineteenth century.

Whitman’s poetry would influence such Harlem Renaissance writers as Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson.

Whitman influenced Beat poets such as Allen Ginsburg. Chilean writer Pablo Neruda claimed to have been

influenced by Whitman. Whitman’s poetry was a model for French symbolists, such

as Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. Modernist poets such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.H.

Auden were also influenced by Whitman.

Let’s listen: From Favorite Poem Project, “Song of Myself” as read by Boston’s John Doherty

Two Transitional Poets Walt Whitman is indeed

considered one of America’s most seminal and most influential voices.

But in this designation, he must share the spotlight with another poet

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Both Whitman and Dickinson

broke with traditional forms and pioneered new ones.

Both delivered to the world completely unique and original voices.

Both influenced and contributed to modern poetry.

Both poets reflected on themes of God, nature, death and immortality

Two Iconoclasts, Two Distinctly Different Voices

Though they shared some similarities, mainly in their iconic stature and their shared themes, Dickinson and Whitman were almost foils in the manner in Their size Their volume Their approach Their structure Their vision of the world

Distinct Differences

Walt Whitman Poems long (epic) and seemingly complex Talkative, expansive, rambling, approachable Lack of structure. Poems tend to run on and

on; there was no set length for his poems, stanzas, or even lines.

Irregular meter No rhyme Father of free verse or poetry

without a rhyme scheme) Idiosyncratic punctuation and spelling The “I”, the individual. “I celebrate myself”

but sense of commonality of experience with all Americans

Work is muscular and fleshy. Very physical. Operates in a very physical realm, concrete objects and specific scenes drawn from daily life. (the city)

Moves among and observes people, gregarious, social, extroverted and outward

Voice is unrestrained and exuberant, bold and optimistic

Audience is the nation. Ambition was to become the American national poet. Self-promoting

Emily Dickinson Poems short and seemingly simple Compact and concise, dense with meaning,

illusive Definite structure. She wrote ballad stanzas,

which are four line stanzas Alternating in iambic tetrameter and trimeter.

Meter derived from Psalms and Protestant hymns

ABCB rhyme schemes. Extensive ue of slant rhyme (near rhymes)

Extensive and consistent use of dashes and internal capitalization, illuminating meaning

Though intensely personal in their reflections, focuses on the universal experience

Very much in the landscape of her own mind, highly cerebral and introspective realm. Thoughts and feelings, abstract concepts

Secluded, constrained, alienated from the world, reclusive, introverted and inward.

Voice is reserved, reflective, tentative at times (can at times appear dry and witty)

Wrote for herself (seemingly no audience). Sought anonymity. Life of obscurity. Only had seven poems published (by friends) but wrote nearly 1,700.

Emily Dickinson Bio

Life A. She was born in a Puritan’s

family. Her father was a famous lawyer.

B. She received college education.

C. She lived a leisure and simple life and kept single all her life. She enjoyed gardening and writing and tried to avoid visitors. (Her life style is similar with Jane Austen’s.)

D. She wrote 1775 poems, but only seven of them published in her life time.

E. Before her death, she asked her sister to burn all her poems. However, her sister published those beautiful poems.

Emily Dickinson Bio Emily Dickinson was a witty woman,

sensitive, full of humanity and with a genius for poetry.

For all the convention in which she was immersed, she embraced nonconformity (question protocols of her faith and traditional roles of wome)

While she was living in almost total seclusion, she wrote in secret whatever she was able to feel, to see, to hear and whatever she was able to imagine. She wrote whenever and wherever. Although she guarded her poems even from her family, 1775 poems were discovered and published after her death.

However, as the only noteworthy woman poet in American literature of the 19th century, she had only seven of her poems published during her lifetime, and it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that her genius was widely recognized.

Emily Dickinson Bio

Despite her seclusion, Emily Dickinson covered a wide range of subjects in poetry. Her favorite subjects are love, death or natural beauty. In her writing she wrote about life and death, expecting to understand the meaning of life by understanding the meaning of death.

Living in the 19th century, a comparatively religious era, she did not belong to any organized religion. However, she wrote of God, man and nature; she probed into the spiritual unrest of man and often doubted about the existence and benevolence of God, because she felt that wild nature was her church and she was able to converse directly with God there.

What to Watch For

Use of paradox – “The most paradoxical of poets. The very poet of paradox” (intimate yet universal in appeal)

She may contradict herself in the same poem – why

Homonyms – double use and meaning of words (“I” vs “eye”)

Foils Death and life Faith and doubt Power of god and power of

individual

Seeing – the power of sight

Faith – waxing and waning

Color – nontraditional use and symbolism

Slant rhyme – not really rhyme, near rhyme, internal sound

Attempts at closure.