REGIONAL REALISM
The First American
Multiculturalism
Realism: A Rejection of Romanticism
Review
• In American Romanticism
• Hero is often isolated artist or super-sensitive type
(Whitman)
• Individualism and individual expression is highest good
(Whitman)
• Idealization of wild, “pure” and “sublime” nature
• Has a message for us (Dickinson)
• Romantics loved mysticism, the exotic and occult
• Poe and Hawthorne
• Also liked to revisit the distant past, especially medieval &
mythological themes
Civil War and Realism
Problem: How can you write about romantic, rare and lofty
emotions after the Civil War has shown us that we’re all just
cannon fodder, that the individual is worth very little?
Wouldn’t it seem utterly irrelevant?
• Similar and more intense reaction after the world wars.
• Writers want to be able to represent their
experience, to make sense of it for themselves and
the world.
• From the Civil War experience and the rise of modern
science, writers start moving toward Realism
• Rise of newspapers also relevant—there’s an appetite for realistic
accounts of people’s lives across the country
Themes in American Realism
• Hero is ordinary person imbedded in an everyday social
world
• Not elevated by extra sensitivity or nobility
• Royalty mocked in Twain
• Individual expression is not deified
• Words can be tricky and communication always occurs in a social
context
• Huck and Jim have to work at it
• Nature is physical, not a message from God or sublime essence
• storms in Huck are dramatic, but not sublime
• Exotic places, occult, and romanticized past are not themes
• Instead we are in the present or close to it
• Living rooms, farms, roads in our real lives, not make-believe or
mythological
Realism also celebrates regional
differences
• Realism asks “who are we really?” and validates our real lives
instead of finding idealized substitutes.
• Recognized and highlighted local regional differences as
artistically interesting and valuable
• It’s the original multiculturalism
• 2 values:
• differences are lovely and should stay different
• we are all one nation by virtue of being able to share these
experiences and value them.
• May be a vestige of the love of the exotic: now the exotic is at home
instead of long ago and far away
• Local dialects, customs, speech patterns, scenes & descriptions got lots
of print space in Atlantic Monthly & similar mags.
• For more info, read your intro in the anthology and William Dean Howells.