American Realism, Naturalism and Regionalism (Local Color)

1
American Realism, Naturalism and
Regionalism(Local Color)
2
The History

• Rapid industrial growth
• Westward expansion
• America changing from a farming culture to an
  urban existence (Farming ? Factories)

3
Problems

• urban poverty/slums
• farm struggles
• labor unrest
• conflicts in the West
• the horrors of the Civil War led to uncertainty
  about the future
• struggle for freedom (especially immigrants,
  women, African-Americans

4
The Roots of American Realism

• The experience of war- little interest in
  imaginative / romantic literature
• Frontier life (conflicts with Native Americans,
  the hardships of pioneer life)
• The urban experience (cities with poverty, slums,
  crime)

5
Literary Realism

• driven by scientific and technological changes
  (see it ? believe it)
• The camera captured reality (i.e. Matthew Bradys
  Civil War photographs)

6
Literary Realism (continued)

• American writers felt the need to observe and
  describe their settings and characters with as
  much accuracy as possible
• accurate depictions of setting, customs, manners
  and speech

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The Literature

• reflected the diversity of the nation
• the promise and problems of America
• portrayed ordinary life, characters and events in
  an objective, almost factual way, free from
  subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color

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Objective

• (1) expressing or dealing with facts or
  conditions as perceived without distortion by
  personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
• Definition from http//www.merriam-webster.com/dic
  tionary

9
Subjective

• (1) peculiar to a particular individual
   personal
• 2) modified or affected by personal views,
  experience, or background

10
Naturalism (a type of realism)

• Suggests that lives and events are decided by
  forces beyond our control
• Man is controlled by his instincts or passions,
  his social and economic circumstances,
  environment, and /or heredity

11
Naturalism (a type of realism)

• Humans have no free will
• Pessimistic
• Individual people are not important
• Nature is not hostile, but indifferent
• Darwinism survival of the fittest (biological
  determinism)

12
Naturalism

• Examples
• Stephen Crane The Open Boat, Maggie a Girl
  of the Streets
• Jack London White Fang, Call of the Wild, To
  Build a Fire

13
Regionalism or Local Color

• Regional writers documented the unique ways of
  life in the rural communities of the nation
• Distinct dialects, landscapes and communities
  were shown
• Tried to capture the what it was REALLY like to
  live in the different regions of the growing
  country

14
Regionalism or Local Color

• Kate Chopins stories set in the Louisiana Bayou
• Bret Hartes stories set in the American West
• Jack Londons tales of the frozen Yukon territory
• Mark Twains stories set along the Mississippi
  River