Realism - in literature, an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity.

Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers, it is most often associated with the literary movement in 19th-century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England, and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factors and environment is the integral element in the dramatic complications (see naturalism). In the drama, realism is most closely associated with Ibsen's social plays. Later writers felt that realism laid too much emphasis on external reality. Many, notably Henry James, turned to a psychological realism that closely examined the complex workings of the mind (see stream of consciousness). Realism Even though there are rumblings of it in earlier decades (Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, for instance, published in 1850), realism doesn't become the dominant literary style in the U.S. till the 1870s. And it's the influence of one hugely important novelist and literary critic, a guy named William Dean Howells (his most famous novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885), that really makes it dominant. Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain are the movement's most famous practitioners. So how can you tell "realist" literature when you see it? There are a few ways. Realism tries hard (just like its name suggests) to present the world as it really is -- the way, for instance, a photograph might capture it. Howells writes that "realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." Since it tries so hard to be truthful, realist literature, unlike much of the "romantic" writing that preceded it, never feels overblown, the way a fairy tale or a parable or a dream might. And it's rarely sentimental or emotional. It just reads like a plain and sensible account of whatever action it's describing. This concern with delivering plain and simple truth leads realists to fill their works with details drawn from everyday life, or "facts," we might as well call them. They can be facts about domestic life, about families and genealogies, about history, about politics, about business and finance, about geographical places.... Whatever. But to make us believe in the reality of the worlds they show us, realists fill their literature with facts to bolster the reader's feeling that, yes, this place I'm reading about is just like the everyday world I live in. And the "everyday" is probably another important concept in realist works. Realists, generally speaking, don't write about extraordinary people in fantastic situations. They write about plain, normal, everyday folks dealing with the trials and tribulations of plain, normal, everyday life. Melville's Moby Dick (1851), which pretty much defines the romantic literary period that preceded realism, is about a crazed sea captain (Ahab) obsessed with killing the biggest, fiercest whale in the world -- not an everyday person in an everyday situation. Realist literature, on the other hand, might often leave you saying, "That one character totally reminds me of my aunt." Again, everyday folks doing everyday things. Since writers are most likely to be factual and convey a sense of the "everyday" when dealing with things they know intimately, many realists write specifically about places where they lived or grew up. There's a whole subcategory of American realism, in fact, called "local color," which tries hard to convey the reality of particular places in the U.S. It's interesting to note, too, that a whole lot of this local-color realism is set in different parts of the Midwest. Up until the realists' time, most American literature is about the East (New England especially). But the fact that the American West is becoming increasingly settled late in the 19th century -- and that Americans at this time are fascinated with the notion of "manifest destiny" -- leads to a boom in literature about the nation's newer territories. Setting their works in specific places leads realist writers to make use of specific dialects, or speech patterns that are particular to certain locales. Before the realists' time, most characters in American literature are simply expected to speak the Queen's English, like good gentlemen and ladies. In the realist period, though, writers make a conscious effort to let American characters speak various types of American English. A white man in rural Missouri doesn't, of course, speak like an English gentleman, so it wouldn't be factual and "truthful" to make him sound that way. Similarly, a black man in rural Missouri may not speak the same way a white man from the same place does, so it wouldn't be factual and truthful to make him speak in anything other than his dialect. Realists have to have an excellent ear to make their characters sound like real Americans. And by representing different American dialects, these writers help create a genuinely American body of literature -- that is, a set of works distinguishable from the European lit most Americans of that time have grown up reading.

Realism generally celebrates the individual. Most realist works feature a central character who has to deal with some moral struggle, hopefully to arrive at an important moral victory or realization before the story's over. And this, relatedly, often means much of the "action" in realist lit is internal action: we hear lots about what's going on in the central character's head; we learn a lot about his or her psychology. Since realist characters live in the "everyday" world, interesting external things aren't always happening -- so the "internal" stuff has to take up the slack. One way or the other, though, realist writers are fascinated by individuals: they love the idea that single human beings must learn, grow, and change their worlds -- or be held responsible for not doing these things. One last thing: realist works are generally plot driven, even if only subtly. This means they pivot around conflicts we as readers want to see resolved. A realist work, then, will typically have at least one protagonist (a main character -- not necessarily a likeable person or a "hero") and one antagonist (another character or a force that will try to prevent the protagonist from getting what s/he wants), and readers will wait to see, as they watch a sequence of increasingly dramatic events, which of them prevails. This is how any standard story works, but it's important to note that realism does these things, too, because the modernist stuff we'll look at later often refuses plot, going in for more fragmented or "stream of consciousness" modes of storytelling instead.

Naturalism Naturalism starts getting big around 1890 and remains huge in American lit for twenty years or so. Its most famous practitioners are Stephen Crane (who published The Red Badge of Courage in 1895), Theodore Dreiser (whose published Sister Carrie in 1900), and Upton Sinclair (who published The Jungle in 1906). Naturalism is an outgrowth of realism. Like realism, it wants to present an almost photographically accurate version of "real" life. It's full of facts and details about an everyday world ordinary people may well recognize. Its characters speak the same dialects real Americans speak. And it's generally plot driven. So how is naturalism distinguishable from the realism that comes before it? Well.... Naturalist writers aren't interested in individuality the way the realists are. They don't think it's the individual's place to change the world, and whatever moral struggle s/he goes through may very well add up to little or nothing. Naturalism's central belief, in fact, is that individual human beings are at the mercy of uncontrollable larger forces that originate both inside and outside them. These forces might include some of our more "animal" drives, such as the need for food, sex, shelter, social dominance, etc. Or, in a more "external" vein, these forces might include the natural environment, the man-made environment, or finance, industry, and the economy. Something, though, is always beating down and controlling the lives of lowly individual humans in naturalist works. The whole point of this literary movement, in fact, is that this is inevitable. And yes, it's often pretty grim. Naturalist works are more likely to be political than traditional realist works. A great many naturalists (Upton Sinclair, for instance, whose The Jungle describes the plight of the working poor in Chicago's meat-packing industry) want to expose the cruelty of such "larger forces" as the U.S.'s voracious capitalist economy. It may, on one level, be inevitable that money will crush poor people, but it might also be true, these writers suggest, that we shouldn't turn a blind eye to it -- that we should, maybe, start thinking about bigger-than-the-individual political movements (like socialism) that can counter capitalism's exploitation of the poor. Naturalist works are more likely than realist works to deal with extraordinary (that is, beyond-the-ordinary) subject matter. In their desire to show how larger forces control and manipulate people, naturalist works often deal with subjects most comfortable middle-class readers wouldn't consider part of their ordinary lives: war, violence, crime, natural disaster, urban squalor, poverty.... Those more politically charged naturalist works I mentioned above are especially likely to depict things that would shock or jar readers, unlike the more "polite" realist works of, say, William Dean Howells or Henry James

William Dean Howells Occupation novelist, short story writer, magazine editor, mentor Nationality American Period 1858-1920 Genres essay, novel, short story, editing Literary movement Realism Howells view on realism is that it is, "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." [9] In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, he wrote, "I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man, who always 'has

the standard of the arts in his power,' will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it is not like a real grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper, the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted, adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple, honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field."[10]

Howells's awareness of social and class injustice and of each man's complicity in such injustice was strengthened by his reading of another Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, whose influence is apparent in the structure of A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). In this book the Marches (like the Howellses) have moved to New York; a newly rich family is seeking social acceptance; a journalist is seeking a magazine that will give him editorial freedom; and class is trying to speak to class, region to region, generation to generation. The novel is compassionate, humane, and tragic. Other social problems also engaged Howells's attention. In the impressive novella An Imperative Duty (1892), he argued eloquently against racism at a moment when his readers were turning rapidly toward white supremacist doctrines. He presented his ideas of a good society, essentially socialistic and libertarian, in the long tale A Traveler from Altruria (1894).

Henry James,

Style and themes

James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are often brash, open, and assertive and embody the virtues freedom and a more highly evolved moral characterof the new American society. James explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly. His protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse, and as his secretary Theodora Bosanquet remarked in her monograph Henry James at Work:

American Naturalism (the last decade of 19th century) Naturalism came from France. Reasons: civil war; social upheavals; Darwins theory of evolution : the survival of the fittest . Men were conditioned and dominated by heredity and environment. (helpless and hopeless) Representative writers: Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser.

Features of naturalist writing: Naturalist writers turned literary creation into a mechanical record of society, in a way of attempting to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness. The characters were often figures of low social and economic classes They stressed men had no free will, their lives were controlled by heredity and environment.

The Age of Realism and Naturalism

The three strong advocates of 19th century American realism William Dean Howells (critic) Henry James

Mark Twain

Background The Civil War marked a deterioration of American moral values. Increasing industrialization and mechanization produced extremes of wealth and poverty. The romantic view of man in the New World began to lose its hold on the imagination of the people. By the 1870s New England Renaissance had waned. The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. Meanwhile, younger writers appeared on the scene. William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain began to publish. The age of realism had arrived.

American Realism(1870-1890) Realism --- A literary doctrine that called for reality and truth in the depiction of ordinary life. It offer an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience. It expresses the concern for the world of the commonplace, and for the familiar and the low. American realism, different from European realism, is more varied and individualistic. e.g. local color: Mark Twain

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) American writer and editor in chief (1871-1881) of the Atlantic Monthly , who encouraged a number of writers, including Mark Twain and Henry James. He wrote many novels, e.g. The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) ,and books of literary criticism, e.g. Criticism and Fiction.

Howells Literary Viewpoints: Realism interprets sympathetically the common feelings of commonplace people. Realism includes a central concern with motives and psychological conflicts. He stresses the need for sympathy and moral integrity. Henry James(1843-1916) His life Born into a wealthy cultured family of New England; one of the few authors in American literary history who did not have to worry about money. His works 20 novels, 112 stories, 12 plays and a number of literary criticism. e.g. The Portrait of a Lady The Wings of the Dove

The international theme: the innocence of the New World and the corruption of the Old World. His contribution to literary criticism is immense. art without life is a poor affair; the aim of the novel is to represent life. He used point of view --- a particular method of telling the story, that is , illumination of the situation and characters through on or several minds. An observer of the mind rather than a recorder of the times. His realism was called psychological realism. Forerunner of the stream of consciousness literature