1. Realism
( )

2. Major Historical Events
: American Civil War
1863: (Jan. 1): Emancipation Proclamation (abolish slavery)
1865: 13th Amendment (abolish slavery)
1869: First transcontinental railroad
1859: Darwin’s The Origin of Species

3. Prominent Writers Mark Twain (1835-1910) Novel/Short Stories
Henry James ( ) Novel
Kate Chopin ( ) Novel/Short Stories
Robert Frost ( ) Poetry (Early Works)
Carl Sandburg ( )Poetry(Early Works)

4. Characteristics of the Writing
Realism was a reaction against the Romantic emphasis on the strange and idealistic. It has focus on the “ordinary” life.
Dialogue includes “voices” from around the country. (Dialect) This is considered colloquial speech (everyday words and phrases). Characters were often common people such as industrial workers, rural or poor people, ambitious businessmen and vagrants, prostitutes , and unheroic soldiers.

5. Characteristics of the writing continued..
The writing sought to expose political corruption, economic inequity, business deception, the exploitation of labor, women rights problems, and racial inequity.
This writing focuses on life in the writer’s time and does not shrink away from the harsh and brutal realities on life and death.

6. Regionalism (Local Color) & Naturalism
Major Historical Events
Both of these fall under the category of Realism. Thus, the historical events are the same.

7. Prominent Writers Mark Twain (Regionalist-South & West)
Kate Chopin (Regionalist- Louisiana)
Bret Harte (Regionalist-West)
Sarah Orne Jewett (Regionalist-New England)
Hamlin Garland (Regionalist-Midwestern)(Naturalist)
Stephen Crane (Naturalist)
Theodore Dreiser (Naturalist)
Edith Wharton (Naturalist)
Jack London (Naturalist)
John Steinbeck (Naturalist)

8. Major Characteristics of the writing
Regionalism is a literary movement that focused on the “local color” of a particular area. The regionalist accurately re-creates the activities, dialect, appearance, and customs of the characters, as well as the environment in which they live.
In regional writing. There is a desire to preserve distinctive ways of life and to satisfy a demand to know how people lived in other parts of the country.

9. Continued..
In naturalistic writing characters are often caught within forces of nature or society that are beyond their understanding or control. This style of writing uses a facts-only approach, a style made through detailed observation of the “truth” of the human experience. These writers may seek to better the world through social reform.