The Rise of Realism

The Civil War & Post-War Period

1850-1900

A Clash of Ideals• Both the North

and the South were motivated by a combination of ideology and their economic interests.

A Clash of Ideals• Southerners

fought to uphold states’ rights and to defend the Southern way of life.

• Northerners fought to end slavery and to preserve the constitutional Union of the founders.

• Both fought to protect their economic interests

Predicting the Future

• Ralph Waldo Emerson had for decades warned that this day would come if slavery was not abolished.

Snapshot from the Civil War• Because rifle balls often shattered bones,

doctors were usually forced to amputate wounded soldiers’ arms or legs, often piling the limbs up on a cart outside the surgeon’s tent.

• Ignorant of hygienic science, surgeons frequently honed their scalpels on the soles of their boots, so infections in the field hospitals ran rampant.

• Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin until 1928, so minor wounds could often be deadly.

Eyes on the War• During the American

Civil War, photographs were the closest thing to newscasts. As a result, the Civil War became the first war to be fully documented in pictures.

After the Civil War, Walt Whitman predicted that “a great literature will…arise out of the era of those four years.”

Writing of the Time • There was little literary output during the war;

since then, however, it has generated over sixty thousands books and articles, written by scholars and historians, making it one of the most written-about wars in history.

• The American Civil War (1861-1865) resulted in terrible blood-shed as the national government sought to preserve the Union by ending the secession of Southern states.

• Despite his firsthand experience of the aftermath of battle, Walt Whitman retained an optimistic view of the American character.

• But the horrors of war merely reinforced the pessimism of Herman Melville.

• Very little important poetry and fiction issued directly from the Civil War, largely because few major American writers experienced the war firsthand.

• Direct accounts of the war found their way into other types of literature (letters, diaries, etc.).

• The “real war” would not find a place in American fiction until the development of the realist novel.

What is Realistic Literature?

• A style of writing, developed in the 19th century, that attempts to depict life accurately without idealizing or romanticizing it.

Local Color• Fiction and

poetry that focuses on the character’s dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.

Smiling Realism• A portrayal of an

America where people may act foolishly, but where their good qualities eventually win out.

Naturalism (1865-1900)

• A literary movement that is a stem of realism.

• Naturalists believed that one’s heredity and social environment determined one’s character.

• Naturalism attempts to determine scientifically the underlying forces influencing the actions of its subjects.