A House Divided and Restored 1860-1890

Authors/Topics to be covered Walt Whitman’s Poetry Spirituals Frederick Douglass Abraham Lincoln Robert E. Lee Chief Joseph Henry Timrod’s Ode Mark Twain and the Rise of Local Color (onset of Realism) Brett Harte Ambrose Bierce

Shift in Literature from Romanticism to Realism Consequence of a war that destroyed certain American illusions of innocence Romantics concentrated on the extremes of existence, the inner life of the isolated individual or the mysteries of the universe (transcendentalists) Post Civil War writers tended to emphasize the middle ground of life and common human problems in social settings

Literary attention shifted from metaphysical questions to manners, customs, and ordinary relations of family, commercial, and social life Tell a story Here are your characters Here is your setting

The dreadful drama of the Civil War Exposed more human limitations due to casualties, assassination, etc. South exposed to vindictive reconstruction policies Industrial boom continues in North to focus on civilian goods Telephone (1876) Railroad expansion New emphasis on oil and electricity Immigration grew Food production soared Voices of reform were now silenced and nation focused on commerce and industry

1870s---The Great Barbeque; Age of the Robber Barons; The Gilded Age (Twain) “gilded”---Twain attempts to contrast the cheap and gaudy materialism of this time with the wisdom and humane values of the days of old End of 1800s, greater disparity between the rich and the poor, farmers and industrialists, and increase in corruption

Romanticism to Realism Thoreau and Hawthorne---DEAD Emerson---OLD Melville---SILENT Longfellow and Whittier---still POPULAR, but in an old fashioned sort of way Walt Whitman provided a connection between the romantic idealism of the 1850s and postwar realities

Romantics concern with imagination, intuition, etc… Realists place less emphasis on the imagination and more on observed fact (more scientific view)

Local Color and Regionalism Regional differences highlighted through literature Distinct patterns of speech, dialects, local customs, recognizable “characters” Purpose of this style of writing was to familiarize Americans with their own nation Local color transitions romanticism and realism Pays attention to dialect, customs, etc. Human emotion and motivation often sentimentalized

Local Color in the South Humorous story or sketch Concentrated on backwoods & frontier Exploited crudity and violence of that life Narrative elements were fistfights, shooting matches, practical jokes, hunting, and deceptive horse trades where the “hero” outcheats his rival Relied greatly upon exaggeration

Local Color in the North Best local color writers were women Harriet Beecher Stowe & Sarah Orne Jewett Irony is an important aspect to the writing Writers wanted to transcend local concerns to illuminate universal issues of human life Tried to create local character types that were true to human nature in any region

The Far West New interest in California San Francisco becomes financial and literary hub Many writers tried to bring the West to mainstream, particularly Twain

Overall Realism tended to restrict imagination The movement toward regional interest, while valuable in emphasizing the special qualities of a region, threatened to make literature merely regional rather than national Yet, through writers such as Twain, local color and vernacular humor became America’s voice carried to the world