lecture6：现实主义
Lecture Six: Realism
弥生时代Realism came as a reaction against “the lie”of romanticism and ntimentalism. The battle between “idealists” and “realists” provided the major issue of American literary history after the Civil War (1861-1865). Literature began to pay less attention to general ideas and more to the immediate facts of life.
小时候的故事This movement took two forms: interest in one’s own backyard and experimentation with more literal methods of writing. “Realism is, in the broadest n, simply fidelity to actuality in its reprentation in literature”. Realist literature is bad on the accurate, unromanticized obrvation of human experiences. It insists on preci description, authentic action and dialogue, moral honesty and a democratic openness in subject matter and style. As a way of writing, realism has been applied in almost every literature throughout history. But as a literary movement, realism is a period concept. It refers to the approach of realist fiction occurred at the latter part of the 19th century. In part, the ri of r
ealism came as a protest against the falness and ntimentality which the realists thought they saw in romantic literature. The realists were determined to create a new kind of literature that was completely and totally realistic. The realistic movement found its effective origins in France with Balzac (1799-1850), in Russia with Turgenev (1818-1883), in England with George Eliot (1819-1880), and in America with W. D. Howells and Mark Twain.
Major Features of Realism:
蒲公英根的作用1. Realism is theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are reprented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner.
2. In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth.
3. Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material.
又进村来打一字4. Realism focus on commonness of the lives of the common people who are customarily ignored by the arts. Realists are interested in the commonplace, the everyda
y, the average, the trivial, and the reprentative.
5. Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.
6. Realism prents moral vision. The author does have a purpo for prenting an objective account of real life.
William Dean Howells (1837- 1920)
Howells’s realism focud on the rising middle-class while treating upper and lower class largely as raw material for obrved spectacles. He insisted that realism directly confront the moral and material problems of society. His career illustrates all the phas in the growth of realism in America.
Howells was a very productive writer with over a hundred books under his name. Among the most important of his 38 novels are his social novels: A Modern Instance, A Woman’s Reason, The Ri of Silas Lapham, A Hazard of New Fortunes.
The Ri of Silas Lapham is generally regarded as Howells’ masterpiece, a fine example of
the American realist novel. In this novel the author was devoted to the small, trivial, and the commonplace and his stress was always on the ethics, on human sympathy and moral integrity. He was critical of the ri of materialism in American life.
After this novel he offered more direct, ethical criticism of social and economic anomalies and inequities as he obrved social environment degraded by the chasm that had opened between the rich and the poor. The novels following this one show his vigorous insistence that realism directly confront the moral and material problems of society.富贵竹好养吗
Becau he linked American literary realism to its European counterpart and defined its means and range, Howells became the center and circumference of realism America.
Henry James (1843-1916)
1. First stage: James’s literary career can be divided into three main stages of developme韵母
nt. In his early period, Henry James developed the international novel, which brings together persons of various nationalities who reprent certain characteristics of their respective countries. Although James wrote a novel with an international tting, he was concerned with about how Americans behave in an international tting. Daisy Miller.
身边那些有特点的人
2. Second stage: in the cond stage, he experienced with various subjects and forms: The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Mu.
3. Third stage: in the third stage, he returned to his international themes and produced the complex and profound novels such as The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. Critics regard them as his most mature and his best.
James’s theory of fiction:
James worked out his influential principle of fiction in The Art of Fiction and contributed very much to the literary critical idiom. This has made him exceptionally reputed in the world of literary criticism.
教资考试时间安排
1. The novelist must be faithful to life as it actually appears.
2. There must be freedom for the artist to choo what subject he will deal with. The judge of art is an aesthetic function, not an ethical one.
