This document discusses characteristics of American literature from the Romanticism period through Naturalism. Key aspects covered include the Civil War's impact on disillusioning writers from Romantic ideals, the rise of Realism to depict everyday life and characters' inevitable choices, Regionalism's focus on specific settings and dialects, and Naturalism's view of humans as victims of forces beyond their control like environment and heredity.

1. AMERICAN LITERATURE

2.  Characteristics of Romanticism:  contemplates nature and
 values feeling and intuition over nature's beauty as a path to
reason spiritual and moral development
 places faith in inner experience  looks backward to the wisdom of
and the power of the the past and distrusts progress
imagination  finds beauty and truth in exotic
 despises the artificiality of locales, the supernatural
civilization and seeks unspoiled realm, and the inner world of the
nature imagination
 prefers youthful innocence to  finds inspiration in
educated sophistication myth, legend, and folk culture
 champions individual freedom  delves into the psychological
and the worth of the individual aspects of good and evil and the
workings of the inner mind

3.  The CIVIL WAR  CONNECT: in a school of
 Began at Fort Sumter in 1000 students, about 120-
1861 and ended at the 150 would have been
Appomattox Courthouse wounded or died during
in 1865, the 4-year period
 Over 600,000 people  Everyone was affected
died from battle, disease,  During and after the
or poor medical care War, many writers were
disillusioned with
Romantic ideals

4.  GROWING MIDDLE CLASS  A MORE COMPLEX
(more literate public to read) WORLD called for more
 URBAN realistic literature and art
INDUSTRIALIZATION  A REJECTION OF
 UPHEAVAL IN SOCIAL IDEALISM and
STRUCTURE and changing ESCAPISM – no clearly
class values defined lines of good and
evil
 A DESIRE to understand and
give a voice to the suffering in  -- less interest in escaping
the real world – to document into supernatural and
the reality of their imaginative stories
culture, history, society  REFLECTED THE
CHANGING CULTURE
OF AMERICA

5.  THE SWELL OF  The prominence of
IMMIGRANTS in the PSYCHOLOGY and the
latter half of the 19th theories of Sigmund
century, which led to a Freud
larger lower class and  Publication of Charles
INCREASED POVERTY Darwin’s Origin of the
IN THE CITIES Species
 PESSIMISM in the  A growing literacy and
wake of Reconstruction interest in fiction and
and journalism
 CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES

6.  An attempt to be a true and faithful representation of
reality
 VERISIMILITUDE
 It comes from Latin verum meaning truth
and similis meaning similar
 An attempt to present a semblance of truth, to be true or
real

7.  Subject matter—ordinary people and events;
 Purpose—Verisimilitude, the truthful
representation of life;
 Point of View—omniscient and objective
 Characters—middle class (class is important)
 Plot de-emphasized
 Focus on everyday life
 Complex ethical choices often the subject
 Events are made to seem the inevitable result of
characters’ choices

8.  Use of the vernacular – or real language .
The language usually reflects social class,
educational background, culture
 Events will usually be plausible, believable
 Often an emphasis on the psychological
turmoil or nature of the character
 Setting is important – characters are
connected to place and time, other
characters

9.  Humans control their destinies
 characters act on their environment
rather than simply reacting to it.
 Slice-of-life technique
 often ends without traditional formal
closure, leaving much untold to
suggest man’s limited ability to make
sense of his life.

10.  Prominent from 1865-1895.
 Coincided with Realism and sharing many of the same
traits.
 Focuses on physical setting / landscape , putting
fictional characters into a real settings

11.  Very specific details about the environment and how
the characters interact with that setting (Twain’s Huck
Finn)
 the more specific they become with details of settings,
the stronger and more believable the characters
become – this allows the writer to tie in universal
themes and values held by the character that were
caused by the setting they are in to a certain region
(eg. the South, the West)

12.  Characters are often STOCK or
STEREOTYPES
 Use of dialect, or language specific to a
particular region or setting
 Uses details that describe local food, living
conditions, dress, architecture, transportati
on, etc.

13.  Narrator-- an educated observer from
the world beyond who’s often
deceived
 Plot—nothing much happens,
revolves around the community
and its rituals

14.  Dislike of change, nostalgia for an
always-past Golden Age;
 Triumphant trickster or trickster
tricked;
 Tall tale-tradition, conflicts
described humorously, larger than
life

15. Definition: A literature that depicts social
problems and views humans as victims of
larger biological, psychological and social
and economic forces.
NATURE or ENVIRONMENT determines
fate of a character
 Scientific determinism
 Psychological determinism
 Historical determinism

16.  Man has no direct control over who or what
he is. His fate is determined by outside
forces that can be discovered through
scientific inquiry;
 Humans respond to environmental forces
and internal stresses and drives, none of
which can be fully controlled or understood
 People are driven by fundamental urges like fear,
hunger, sex
 The world is a “competitive jungle,”

17.  Man is a victim of his inner and
subconscious self (Freud).

18.  Man is fundamentally an animal,
without free will;
 Governed by determinism
 External and internal forces,
environment or heredity control
behavior;
 Characters have compensating
humanistic values which affirm life;
 Struggle for life becomes heroic and
affirms human dignity
 Pessimistic view of human
capabilities—life is a trap

19.  Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism
are intertwined and connected.
 Their influence has dominated most
literature created since 1920, though
the movement itself is dated to roughly
that point.
 They are truly American modes of
writing.