American realism
Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2012
American realism
1. American realism
Henry James
‘The “supreme virtue” of fiction, and the quality by which its
success should be judged, lies in its ability to produce an “air
of reality” or an “illusion of life’.
Henry James, 1884
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
1. American realism
‘Social realists’ were interested in:
•exploring problems of economic inequality;
•capturing the experience of urban life;
•exploring and representing the impact of social class and
ethnicity on American life.
‘Psychological realists’ were more concerned with:
•looking beyond the surface of social life;
•penetrating the repression, instability and inequalities of late
19th-century American society.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
2. Henry James’s life
• He was born in New York City in
1843.
• His father was a wealthy, cultured
man.
• His elder brother, William, was to
become a psychologist and a
philosopher.
• He went to Europe at the age of
twelve and laid the foundations of his
knowledge of European history,
culture and art.
• Back to the USA, he entered law
school at Harvard University.
Henry James at 16 years
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
2. Henry James’s life
• He returned to Europe.
• In Paris he came into
contact with Flaubert,
Zola and Guy de Maupassant.
• He moved to London in 1876,
where he was to live for
the rest of his life.
• In 1915 he became a British
citizen.
• He died in 1916.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
3. Henry James: main works
•
Roderick Hudson (1875)
•
The American (1877)
•
Daisy Miller (1879)
•
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
•
The Princess Casamassima
(1886)
•
Performer - Culture & Literature
The Bostonians (1886)
American realism
3. Henry James: main works
•
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
•
What Maisie Knew (1897)
•
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
•
The Ambassadors (1903)
•
The Golden Bowl (1904)
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
4. Henry James: main theme
Portraying the gap
between:
the innocent, unconventional and idealistic Americans
and the educated, refined but often corrupt Europeans.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
5. James and psychological
realism
His later fiction explored
•states of feelings;
•dilemmas of existence;
•the complexity of human relationships;
•the detailed study of the human soul.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
5. James and psychological
realism
James’s modernity
•He deals with the ambiguity behind appearances.
•His characters make moral choices but discover their
mistakes too late.
•Absence of well-defined values.
The leitmotif of James’s novels
•A tragic vision of evil and betrayal ending with the obsessive
analysis of selfishness and moral corruption.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
6. The limited point of view
The troubled
experiences
Active participation
of the reader in interpreting the events.
Nearly always seen through
the eyes of the central character.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
7. American regional realism
‘Regional realists’:
•Emphasised the particularities of geographic settings.
•Evoked the distinctive customs, speech and culture of
specific regions of the United States
developed as:
an act of nostalgia and conservation in response to the
fast post-war industrialisation that was threatening older,
traditional ways of life.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
7. American regional realism
‘Regionalist writers’
•transcribed the authentic rhythms and idioms of local dialect;
•made their characters’ dialogue mimic the way people really
talked.
Mark Twain  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884–85)
Kate Chopin (1899)
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
8. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
• He was born in 1835 in Florida,
Missouri.
• He was brought up in Hannibal, a
small town on the Mississippi River
• After his father’s death in 1847, he
was apprenticed as a printer to his
brother Orion.
• From 1853 he travelled widely in the
eastern states and in the West.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
8. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
• He reported for small-town newspapers.
• He worked as a miner and a steamboat pilot on the
Mississippi River.
• He established a reputation as a humorist and called
himself ‘a realist’.
• He became a celebrity often speaking out on public issues
and world affairs.
• In 1907 he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford
University.
• He died in 1910.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
9. Mark Twain: main works
• Roughing It (1872)
• The Gilded Age (1873)
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876)
• The Prince and the Pauper
(1882)
• Life on the Mississippi (1883)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1884–
85)
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
10. The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (188485)
• Originally
a sequel to Tom Sawyer
• Setting  St Petersburg
• Narrative technique  first-person narration
• Point of view  Huck’s one.
Huck is a genuine outlaw:
• is untidy and restless;
• near-illiterate, trying to break away from the restraints of
civilisation;
• has a practical, unsentimental attitude;
• is tormented by doubts about the moral dictates of
friendship.
•
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
10. The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884-85)
Themes
•Freedom and integrity.
•The analysis of violence and cruelty.
•The physical and moral squalor of the riverside communities.
•The repression of ‘natural and healthy instincts’, which
makes man dishonest, hard and cruel.
•A rejection of rationalism and civilisation.
•An appreciation of man’s primitive innocence.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
10. The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884-85)
The Mississippi as
•the habitat of a more natural and spontaneous way of life;
•the symbol of a ‘lost America’, spoilt by economic progress
and moral decadence.
Twain’s greatest achievement
•The creation of a prose style suited to the American ethos
 the American vernacular, a warm and vital language which
conveyed the ease and informality of the national
idiom.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
11. Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
•She was born in St Louis, Missouri,
into a financially secure family.
•Her mother was descended from
French Creole ancestors.
•Her father was an Irish immigrant
who had made his fortune as a
merchant in St Louis.
•She learned to speak both French and
English.
•She was sent to a Catholic school.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Kate Chopin
American realism
11. Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
• She married Oscar Chopin, a French Creole from a
Louisiana planter family, at the age of nineteen.
• They settled in New Orleans, where Oscar went into the
cotton business.
• When her husband died, Kate had to support their six
children with limited financial resources.
• She moved back to St Louis and began writing poetry and
short stories.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
12. The Awakening (1899)
Theme
The conflict between social
constraints placed on women
and their desire for independence.
The heroine
Edna, a Creole woman who is on holiday in the late 1800s in
the summer holiday resort of Grand Isle.
Performer - Culture & Literature
American realism
12. The Awakening (1899)
The means of Edna’s awakening
•swimming
•painting
•expressing her emotions freely
The symbol of the sea
•freedom
•escape
•rebirth
•infinite potential
•the strength, glory and lonely horror of independence
Performer - Culture & Literature