Chapter Eight
The Age of Realism (came in the latter half of the 19thC following the Civil War)
Background:
1. Labor force: After the Civil War, with the abolition of the slavery system, black slaves were t free. Great number of immigrants arrived, farmers moved to towns. Tho provided enough labor force.
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2. Natural Resources: Petroleum was found in sizeable quantity.
3. Transportation: railroads developed quickly.
4. Advanced technology was applied.
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Features of Realism:
1. It express the concern for the world of experience, of the commonplace, for the familiar and the low.
2. The Realism writers wrote about what they obrved and knew. They believed that reprentation of life should be the main object of the novel, and offered an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience.
3. Realism reacts against Romanticism’s emphasis on intuition, imagination, a dreary n of wonder, idealism, faith in nature and general optimistic belief in the goodness of things.
跳屏William Dean Howells Henry James Mark Twain 写倡议书的作文
卤花生William Dean Howells（豪威尔斯1837-1920）
(The most important realist, the champion of literary realism in America)
He was born in a small town in Ohio and brought up in humble surroundings. He was the
first president of the American Academy of Arts and letters, once the editor-in-chief of the country’s most influential journal, The Atlantic Monthly. He wrote The Campaign Life of Abraham Lincoln, a book which helped Lincoln become elected and brought Howells recognition and an appointment as American Consul in Venice.
Literary ideas as a realist:
世界能源危机
1. Define realism as “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”.
2. Realism is the quest of the average and the habitual rather than the exceptional and the unique high or low. He preferred not to look upon man in his “heroic or occasional phas”, but to ek him in his habitual mood. Realism interprets “the common feelings of commonplace people
关于数学的谜语3. He wrote about “this happy continent”, about the smiling aspect of America. In his mind, the main trend of America is “healthy, joyful, and happy.”
The Ri of Silas Lapham (赛拉斯•拉帕姆的发迹)
The Fall or Ri
The Fall and Ri….
Relates the story of a new upstart in mid-19th-C in Boston.
Comment on the novel:
1. Emphasis on ethics, stress the need for sympathy and moral integrity and the need for different social class to adapt to one another. (Coreys and Laphams overcame their prejudice and come together)
面中凹陷2. Not approve of competitive economic individualism. (Lapham handles his partner Rogers roughly and has squeezed him out of business. He was in turn treated in the same way by his own rivals)
3. Critical of the ri of materialism in American life. The burning down of the hou reprents the victory of his idealized view of man and society.
4. The gorgeous hou is a symbol of both his material success and his moral fall. (His wife declares that there is blood on its timber becau of his rough treating of Rogers.
白带异味用什么药A Modern Instance （现代婚姻）
Henry James (1843-1916)
Literary views and contribution:
1. As a realist, he holds that art must be related to life, the aim of the novel is to reprent life. He advocates an immen increa of freedom in novel-writing and argues for inclusion of the disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace. So he was one of the three staunch advocates of 19th American realism.
2.He is considered the founder of psychological realism. He shifted the ground of realistic art from the outer to the inner world. We obrve events and people filter through the consciousness of his characters. By emphasizing the inner awareness and inward movements of his characters in face of outside occurrence rather than merely portraying t
heir environment in any detail, he became the first of the modern psychological analysts in the novel and anticipated in his works the modern stream-of-consciousness.
His major fictional theme:
1. The international theme: His American characters (They all come from well-to-do family and do not have to work for a living, so they traveled to Europe) come to Europe, and encounter European culture in the form of European conventions. European were often over-refined (cultured, elegant ), degenerate and artificial by Americans. Americans were considered naïve, vulgar and ignorant. He prented the superiority of some of the values of the New World, made a contrast between American moral innocence, inexperience and the European social sophistication.
2. His fictional world is peopled always by American heroes and heroines who, confronting European sophistication, either triumph over it or was overwhelmed.
3. He wrote about the wealthy, deep-rooted leisure class, and became its spokesman.
