1850-1900
 The poet, Walt Whitman, helped to nurse the soldiers.
 For this reason, he had an optimistic viewpoint that
was brought on by the American character of the
soldier.
 The author, Herman Melville, had a pessimistic
viewpoint.
 His poems show “human nature being stripped bare,
revealing not the heroism and strength that Whitman
found, but, rather, humanity’s basic evil.”
 Works of historical interest were common (soldiers’
letters and diaries)
 Works of literary significance were very rare.
 Q: Why did an event of such magnitude result in such
a scant literary output?
 A: Few major American writers saw the war firsthand.
 A: Traditional literary forms of the time were
inadequate to express the horrifying details of the war.
(The realistic novel had not been fully developed in the
U.S.)
 Writers who aimed at a very minute fidelity to the
common course of ordinary life. Their subjects were
drawn from the slums of the rapidly growing cities,
from the factories that were replacing farmlands, and
from the lives of far from idealized characters.
 Sought to explain why ordinary people behave the way
they do – relied on the sciences of biology, psychology,
and sociology.
 Literature that emphasizes a specific geographic
setting and that makes use of the speech and manners
of the people who live in that region.
 Realistic in depiction of speech patterns and manners
 Unrealistic in depiction of character and social
environment
 Flourished again in 1920s and 1930s and is still
important.
 Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Bret Harte, Charles W. Chesnutt
 Mark Twain – best example of a regional writer whose
Realism far surpassed local bounds.
 The most active proponent of Realism in American
fiction.
 Insisted that Realism should:
 Deal with the lives of ordinary people
 Be faithful to the development of character, even at the
expense of action
 Discuss the social questions perplexing America
 Famous for “smiling Realism” – portrayed an America
where people may act foolishly, but where their good
qualities eventually win out.
 Viewed life as a much rougher clash of contrary forces
than Howells did
 Saw Howells’s fiction as too strait-laced and narrow
 Used the novel to examine social institutions with the
aim of reforming them.
 Naturalist.
 Relied heavily on the growing scientific disciplines of
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psychology and sociology
Human behavior is determined by forces beyond the
individual’s power, especially by biology and
environment.
Looked at human life as a grim losing battle.
Characters often had only limited choices and
motivations.
Humans subject to natural laws of the universe – like
animals, they lived crudely, by instinct, unable to
control their own destinies.
 America’s greatest writer of the psychological novel
 Concentrated on distinctions in character motivation.
 Did not believe humans driven by the Naturalist view
of animal-like instincts
 Novels take place in Europe – more complex and
sinister than American society
 Also known for his psychological novels
 Concentrated on human character at moments of
stress
 Ironist – juxtaposed human pretensions with the
indifference of the universe.
“A man said to the universe:
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’”