1. Realism in American Literature

2. "Realism" is frequently used to describe scenes of humble life.
The term realist, used to describe a work of art, has often simply meant that "ugly" objects or figures are represented, as opposed to those considered "beautiful".
Not so pretty.
"Realism" is frequently used to describe scenes of humble life.
Humble life.
L'Origine du monde

3. James Abbott McNeill Whistler
As the name implies, Realism is a style of painting that depicts the subject matter as it appears in reality, without distortion or stylization.
One of the most famous paintings of the realistic period.
Whistler’s Mother

4. Women working in the field represented the common place experience.
Steamboat crossing the Big Sandy River. 1880Steamboat crossing the Big Sandy River. 1880
Women working in the field
represented the common place experience.

5. The purpose of Realism writing is to instruct and to entertain.
Characteristics Of
Realistic Writing
The subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience," - it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.
Subject Matter
The Breakfast Table, 1884

6. Realism writers describe reality closely and in comprehensive detail.
Writers tried to be exactly like “real life.”
Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.
Characters appear in their real and complex situations.
For the first time in literary history, writers reveal the lives of ordinary or lower class people.

7. Authors write realistically
about war.

8. John Singer Sargent
The Oyster Gatherers, 1878

9. Onion Seller, 1882

10. Dialogue is written in ordinary
speech, not heightened or poetic.
Dialogue
Tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
Tone
There is the belief among the Realists that humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply reacting to it.
Human Control

11. Richard Cory BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.