American Realism Steamboat Robert E. Lee, by August Norieri 1884

  Most famous literature after the Civil War is called Realism  An attempt to portray life and people as they really were  This is a direct contradiction to the Romanticism of the early 1800’s Realism

  Romanticism was a literary movement that stressed creativity & imagination, emotion, optimism, and idealism  (Think about the highly imaginative works of Edgar Allan Poe)  Realism in America is a direct reaction to the Civil War  these writers are disillusioned by the Civil War  use of highly realistic detail  Realists looked for meaning in the commonplace Realism vs. Romanticism

  Naturalism  Regionalism Types of Realism

  This is a more pessimistic form of Realism  Believed that larger forces such as Fate, Nature, and Heredity determine one’s destiny  People have no control over their lives  Viewed reality as “the inescapable working out of natural forces” Naturalism

  The “local color movement”  Use of regional dialect and vivid descriptions of local landscapes  Sought to capture “the essence of life in the various regions of the growing nation” Regionalism

  “Reconstruction” of the South  Industrial growth  Westward expansion / “The Wild West” What else is happening?

Mark Twain “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

  Samuel Langhorne Clemens  Grew up in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri  American humorist  Realism / Regionalism  Became instantly famous in 1865 when we published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”  Have you ever heard of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

  Published in 1884  Twain’s masterpiece  “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. ” –Ernest Hemingway  Portrays the adventures of a young white orphan and a runaway slave  Delves into the realities of the prewar South Huckleberry Finn

  from the Spanish word pícaro, meaning “rogue” or “rascal”  picaro: a rogue or adventurer  Picaresque: a satirical form of prose, often humorous and detailed, depicting a “roguish hero” who lives by his wits in a corrupt society  usually written in first person  main character is often of low social class  told in a series of “episodes”  behavior of the picaro is almost criminal, but he remains sympathetic to the reader “The Picaresque Novel”