Monday,
September 26,
2011
Introduction to Realism,
Regionialsim, Naturalism
http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=Y8PulNC_gPY
Take Notes on the Video:
How can you identify each
movement?
• Essential Question: How is
realism, Naturalism, and
Regionalism reflected in
American Literature:
Webquest:
http://web.me.com/stevesamp
son/RealismNaturalismWebq
uest/Description.html
• Groups:
– #1 Ayanna B, Jada, Demi,
Marquessia
– #2 Keyona, Elias, Nadiyah,
Jemima, pearla
– #3 Genesis, Aaron, Ayanah J,
Talisa, Uniqueka
– #4 Tarynn, Lamonica, Kendra,
Garette Whitted, Tyressa
Monday,
September 26,
2011
Introduction to Realism,
Regionialsim, Naturalism
http://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=Y8PulNC_gPY
Take Notes on the Video:
How can you identify each
movement?
• Essential Question: How is
realism, Naturalism, and
Regionalism reflected in
American Literature:
Webquest:
http://web.me.com/stevesamp
son/RealismNaturalismWebq
uest/Description.html
TUESDAY,
September 27,
2011
http://www.sascurriculu
mpathways.com/portal/L
aunch?id=1268
Take Quiz at the end of the lesson
• Essential Question: How is realism,
Naturalism, and Regionalism reflected in
American Literature:
Question Stems
INFERENCE:
When the question
asks you to make an
inference, you
won't find the
answer stated in
the text. You're
going to have to
make a
●"The passage (or the
author) implies....”
●"The passage (or the
author) suggests....”
●"The author might
agree...."
●"The reader can infer
that ....”
●"The reader can
conclude that....”
●"The reader can
assume that...."
FACT/OPINION:
When the
question asks you
to determine if a
statement is fact
or opinion, you
know that you're
going to have to
distinguish
between.
●"Which of the
following could
be a fact rather
than an opinion?”
●"The statement, " .
. ." in paragraph
one is meant to
be ...."
Wednesday,
September 28,
2011
• Essential Question: How is
realism, Naturalism, and
Regionalism reflected in
American Literature:
• Read one story of Realism
and complete Activity
• The Celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County
• http://www.viddler.com/expl
ore/BBCAA/videos/22/
The Age of Realism
The Literature of the Late Nineteenth
Century
The Age of Realism:
Marked by the End of the Civil War: 1861-1865
• Cost of the Civil War
– The Human Cost
• 1,094,543 Casualties
• The North lost one out of ten
– 110,100 in battle
– 224,580 to disease
• The South lost one out of four
– 94,000 in battle
– 64,000 to disease
• Two percent of US population died in the Civil War, with only WWII
claiming more lives;
– Economic Cost
• Estimated at 6.6 billion, which would be 165 billion today
By the end of the Civil War
• The Emancipation Proclamation and 13th
Amendment had abolished slavery
• The industrial North had defeated the agrarian South
• Social order grew based on mass labor and mass
consumption;
– Steam power replaced water power
– Machines replaced hand labor
• The Industrial Revolution had begun
The Effects of The Industrial
Revolution
• Migration from rural to urban areas
• Independent, skilled workers replaced by
semi-skilled laborers;
• Large corporations were established,
devaluing the personal relationship between
management and workers or company and
customers.
Political Upheaval
• Political power shifted to the laboring classes;
• Political patronage and graft caused civic corruption;
• The power of the federal government expanded
during the Civil War;
– National conscription laws;
– Federal income taxes levied;
– Paper money backed by federal government rather than
individual states issued.
Mass Communication and Migration
• Coast-to-coast communication
– Pony Express (1860)—10 days
Telegraph (1861)—just seconds to communicate across
country
Transatlantic telegraph cable (1866) allowed instant
communicate with Europe
Telephone patented (1867)
By 1900, 1.3 million telephones in U.S.
Coast-to-coast travel
Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
By 1889, coast-to-coast travel—4 days
Alexander Graham Bell
Samuel Morse: Inventor of the
Transcontinental
Railroad
Telegraph
Effects of Transcontinental Mobility
• Increased commercial development
• Farm and ranching products available nation wide
• National retail organizations undersold local shop
keepers
– Richard Sears and Montgomery Wards
– Ready-made goods and clothes less expensive than local,
hand-produced wares
• Time zones reduced from 56 to 4 in 1883
Other Social Changes
• Migration westward expanded the U.S. from the Atlantic to
the Pacific
– Native American populations displaced and subjugated;
• Growth of Industry
– Steelmaking, the nation’s dominant industry
– Alternating electrical current (1886)
– American petroleum industry begins
• Growth of population
– Total population doubled from 1870 to 1890
– National income quadrupled
– Gap between rich and poor widened
Civil Rights Changed
• Reconstruction in the South ends by 1877
– Poll taxes and literacy tests disqualified black voters
– Separate and unequal schools created
– White supremacy re-established
• Women’s rights increase
– More women entered the workforce
– All female colleges were formed: Vassar, Wellesley and Smith
– Women gained the right to vote in 1922
• Foreign immigration increases
– By 1910, one-third of largest cities foreign-born
• Need for public education increases
– The Morrill Acct of 1862—land given to states for establishment of “landgrant” universities
Intellectual Revolution: Changes in
Thinking brought about by Changes in
• Changes in science
Society
• Changes in psychology
• Changes in philosophy
Science: Charles Darwin
• Published The Origin of Species,
– Hypothesized that man is the
product of evolution,
– Man is special not because
God created him in His image,
• but because man had
successfully adapted to
changing environmental
conditions
• and had passed on his
survival-making
characteristics to his progeny.
Psychology: Sigmund Freud
• Believed that the mind
could be understood in
terms of repressed urges,
usually sexual;
• Theorized an unconscious
system of ideas that
governs human reactions
and response;
• Id, Ego, and Super-ego
Philosophy: Karl Marx
• Explained human
history as the result of
class struggles;
• Human identity is
defined by social
context;
• It is human nature to
transform nature.
Philosophy: American Pragmatism
• Truth is tested by its usefulness
or practical consequences;
• Truth is a commodity accessible
on the surface of things;
• It’s perceptible to the senses
and verifiable through
experience;
• Permanent truths exist apart
from the material world—the
mind of God, Plato’s ideal
forms
William James
From these social changes come two
literary movements
• Realism,
– first begun as the local color movement
• Naturalism
Realism
• Begins in France, as realisme, a literary doctrine
calling for “reality and truth in the depiction of
ordinary life.”
– Grounded in the belief that there is an objective reality
which can be portrayed with truth and accuracy as the
goal;
– The writer does not select facts in accord with
preconceived ideals, but rather sets down observations
impartially and objectively.
A Reaction against Romanticism
• These authors sought
to portray life as they
saw it, insisting that
the ordinary and local
were just as suitable
for art as the sublime.
“Nothing more and nothing less than the
truthful treatment of material. “ William
Dean Howells
Realism began in America as Local Color
• A synthesis of romantic plots and realistic
descriptions of things;
• Definition of Local Color:
– Literature that focuses on the characters, dialect,
customs, topography, and other features
particular to a specific region that exploits the
speech, dress, mannerisms, and habits of that
specific region .
Characteristics of Local Color
• Setting—often remote and usually integral to the
story;
• Characters—more concerned with the character of
the region than an individual—quaint, stereotypical;
– Narrator-- an educated observer from the world beyond
who’s often deceived
– Emphasis on dialect
– Use of stock characters
• Plot—nothing much happens, revolves around the
community and its rituals
Themes in Local Color
• Dislike of change, nostalgia for an always-past
Golden Age;
• Triumphant trickster or trickster tricked;
• Tall tale-tradition, conflicts described
humorously, larger than life
Characteristics of Realism
•
•
•
•
•
Subject matter—ordinary people and events;
Purpose—Verisimilitude, the truthful representation of life;
Point of View—omniscient and objective
Characters—middle class, psychological realism
Plot de-emphasized
– Focus on everyday life
– Complex ethical choices often the subject
– Events are made to seem the inevitable result of characters’ choices
Themes in Realism
• 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.
Naturalism: A Harsher Realism
Definition: A literature that depicts social
problems and views humans as victims of
larger biological, psychological and social and
economic forces.
– Scientific determinism
– Psychological determinism
– Historical determinism
Scientific, Biological or Darwinian
Determinism
• 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,”
Psychological Determinism
• Man is a victim of his
inner and
subconscious self
(Freud).
Historical Determinism
• Historical or socioeconomic
determinism (Marx):
the world is a
battleground of
economic and social
forces;
Objectives of Naturalism
• Presentation is objective and detached
• Subject matter—raw and unpleasant experiences
which reduce people to degrading circumstances in
order to survive;
• Setting commonplace and un-heroic
• Novelist discovers qualities in lower class characters
usually associated with heroes
– Suggestion that life on lowest levels is more complicated
Themes in Naturalism
• 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
The Ultimate Problem in Realism
• Whose reality is portrayed?
– Those in power, usually male, white and privileged
• Whose reality is marginalized and ignored?
– Those without power: women, people of color,
people of lower economic means
Thursday,
September 29,
2011
• Essential Question: How is
realism, Naturalism, and
Regionalism reflected in
American Literature:
• Read one story of
Naturalism and complete
Activity
• To Build a Fire
• what it does it mean "to build
a fire?
• http://www.loudlit.org/audio/f
ire/pages/01_01_fire.htm
Questions for the Reading:
① Once you have had some time to look for instances of knowledge and
instinct, compare the main character to the Sulphur Creek old-timer who
gave advice. What are some key differences in their attitudes towards nature
and their knowledge of nature
② Next compare the man and the dog:
① How is the relationship between the man and the dog discussed at first?
② What did the dog instinctively understand that the man did not?
③ How does the man and dog's relationship symbolize the man's
relationship to his environment?
③ "On the other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the
man… so the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the
man.”
① The dog in many respects symbolizes the natural landscape that surrounds
them. Just as the man did not respect the dog, so too does the man fail to
respect the world around him. Consider this suggestion as you read the
passage of the story that describes the struggle between the man and the
dog. The man, freezing, attempts to kill the dog in order to steal its warmth, a
futile struggle that is an apt symbol for the life and death struggle he is
experiencing in the wilderness.
⑤ As you draw to the close of the story, consider the following questions:
⑥ What does the man's failure to "build a fire" symbolize?
⑦ Does the man have either knowledge or instinct?
⑧ Did the man finally gain knowledge at the end of the story?
⑨ What is the significance of the dog's final movement towards civilization at
the end of the story? What does this suggest about the dog's relationship to
nature?
⑩ Is instinct driving this movement?
⑪ Many stories may have several kinds of conflict.
⑫ What 2 types of conflict can you identify in To Build a Fire:
⑬ 1)in which the man struggles to survive against the deadly cold;
2)in which the Newcomer is constantly fighting his own foolishness fortaking so
many risks in such extreme cold and not following the advice of people with
more experience?
⑭ Which of these two conflicts is the most important to the plot?
⑤ The external conflict: Man vs. The Cold—a lexical hunt
⑥ The main conflict in To Build a Fire is man against the cold.
⑤ •How many words or phrases can you find in the story that relate to
theword cold or the feeling of being cold?
⑥ The internal conflict: Man vs. His Own Stupidity
⑤ Can you find some quotes from the story in which London
actually states that his character is not very intelligent.
Friday,
September 29,
2011
• Essential Question: How is realism,
Naturalism, and Regionalism reflected in
American Literature: