The Rise of Realism

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The Rise of Realism

• The Civil War Post-War Period
• 1850-1900

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A Clash of Ideals

• Both the North and the South were motivated by a
  combination of ideology and their economic
  interests.

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A Clash of Ideals

• Southerners fought to uphold states rights and
  to defend the Southern way of life.

• Northerners fought to end slavery and to preserve
  the constitutional Union of the founders.

• Both fought to protect their economic
  interests

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Predicting the Future

• Ralph Waldo Emerson had for decades warned that
  this day would come if slavery was not abolished.

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Snapshot from the Civil War

• Because rifle balls often shattered bones,
  doctors were usually forced to amputate wounded
  soldiers arms or legs, often piling the limbs up
  on a cart outside the surgeons tent.
• Ignorant of hygienic science, surgeons frequently
  honed their scalpels on the soles of their boots,
  so infections in the field hospitals ran rampant.
  
• Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin
  until 1928, so minor wounds could often be deadly.

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Eyes on the War

• During the American Civil War, photographs were
  the closest thing to newscasts. As a result, the
  Civil War became the first war to be fully
  documented in pictures.

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After the Civil War, Walt Whitman predicted that
a great literature willarise out of the era of
those four years.
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Writing of the Time

• There was little literary output during the war
  since then, however, it has generated over sixty
  thousands books and articles, written by scholars
  and historians, making it one of the most
  written-about wars in history.

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• The American Civil War (1861-1865) resulted in
  terrible blood-shed as the national government
  sought to preserve the Union by ending the
  secession of Southern states.
• Despite his firsthand experience of the aftermath
  of battle, Walt Whitman retained an optimistic
  view of the American character.
• But the horrors of war merely reinforced the
  pessimism of Herman Melville.

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• Very little important poetry and fiction issued
  directly from the Civil War, largely because few
  major American writers experienced the war
  firsthand.
• Direct accounts of the war found their way into
  other types of literature (letters, diaries,
  etc.).
• The real war would not find a place in American
  fiction until the development of the realist
  novel.

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What is Realistic Literature?

• A style of writing, developed in the 19th
  century, that attempts to depict life accurately
  without idealizing or romanticizing it.

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Local Color

• Fiction and poetry that focuses on the
  characters dialect, customs, topography, and
  other features particular to a specific region.

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Smiling Realism

• A portrayal of an America where people may act
  foolishly, but where their good qualities
  eventually win out.

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Naturalism (1865-1900)

• A literary movement that is a stem of realism.
• Naturalists believed that ones heredity and
  social environment determined ones character.
• Naturalism attempts to determine scientifically
  the underlying forces influencing the actions of
  its subjects.