Realism Civil War was a turning point in American history and literature. During this era the country was wholly transformed. Before the Civil War, America had been essentially a rural, agrarian, isolated republic. By the time the United States entered World War 1, it was an industrialized, urbanized, continental nation. What is characteristic of this period: o expansion of new lands and new wealth (white Americans reached the Pacific coast, displacing Indian and the Spanish settlements were they stood in the way; buffalo and other game gave way to cattle, sheep, farms, villages and cities) o period of huge immigration (25 million immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, moved to the cities) o industrial and technological development (new technologies and industries: steel, railroad, oil and meat-packing industries; accumulation of capital: Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller; the first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869; electricity introduced on a large scale) The era following the Civil War was referred to as Gilded Age. Gilded Age was in fact a novel written by Mark Twain and in it Twain characterized the period: showy and rich on the surface, under which there is no solidity. The rapid transcontinental settlement and new urban industrial development were accompanied by the development of a national literature of great abundance and variety. There were new themes, new forms, new subjects, new regions, new authors, new audiences. American writers in this period wrote to earn money, earn fame, and change the world. They moved from romanticism toward realistic literary forms and toward naturalistic interpretations of man and his destiny. Realism and naturalism were literary modes well suited to interpret a materialistic society. REALISM is the portrayal of life with fidelity. Realists, in contrast to Romantic authors, are less concerned with their own subjective responces and more concerned with the real world around them. Realist writers introduced industrial workers and the rural poor, ambitious businessmen, prostitutes and unheroic figures as major characters in fiction. For many writers, realism was an ideology and the novel had the power to become a political weapon. William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was the chief spoker and promoter of realism. He was extremely productive, he wrote and published about 100 books during his sixty-year professional career. By his writing Howells influenced mainly middle class readers. He made the emerging middle class aware of itself: in his novels he described their tastes, social behaviour, their values and problems. The main themes of his novels are: goodness of the provincial American, the decay of morals in modern life, the struggle between the classes, the consequences of unknowingly violating social taboos A Modern Instance – a novel about divorce, the characters are complex and unromantic, the author blames society for their troubles The Rise of Silas Laphan – a novel about an ordinary man who becomes rich in the paint business, unsuccessfully attempts to join Boston´s high society, in the end his business is ruined because he refuses to cheat other people Howells wrote many critical literary articles and essays in which he advocated realism against romanticism. Realism was according to him telling the truth about the motifs and principles that shape a life of man, avoiding sentiment. The duty of the writer is to provide ethical comment. Howells demanded that fiction should find its material in everyday events of American middle class life. He also demanded that characters act from psychologically valid motivation, speaking the language of actual men and women, and that the narrative proceed without resort to accident and coincidence. (Criticism and Fiction – a collection of essays) Mark Twain (1835-1910), penname of Samuel Clemens, was the most popular author of this period. He grew up in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri. His father died when Twain was 12, and from that time on he had to work to support himself and his family. He worked as a printer and later as a pilot of the Mississippi riverboat. During the Civil War Twain briefly served in the Confederate Army, and then moved west, to California. There he got acquainted with so called „tall tale“. Tall tales were a basic form of folk entertainment, usually told in some kind of regional dialect. Twain absorbed this tradition and became famous thanks to his skillful retelling of a well-known tall tale „The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.“ However, Twain´s most popular novels are connected with his Mississippi boyhood: Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Henry James (1843-1916) was a realist of the inner life (psychological realism). He came to believe that the artist should not simply describe the surface of social life in particular times and places, but also to explore the deepest dimensions of the psychological and moral nature of human beings. (Henry James´s brother William was the notable psychologist and influencial philosopher who developed the philosophy of pragmatism). James travelled to Europe many times. He visited England, Switzerland, Italy, France. This experience helped him to develop his „international theme“ – a story about Americans in Europe. In these stories American innocence, inexperience and cultural ignorance is confronted by European social sophistication, sense of tradition and knowledge of a rich culture. Most often James explored the tensions that develop between the young, innocent, selfless and free woman and the older, sophisticated and convention-bound man. The best known novels with the international theme are: The American, Daisy Miller, The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors. Another theme Henry James explored was the nature of art. He wrote about the creative process, the artist´s conflict with social conventions, false values and limited imagination. James used this theme mainly in his short stories, the most famous one is „The Real Thing“. James´s narrative method is extremely complex. The sentences are elaborate and require close attention. James tells his stories through the consciousness of a single narrator and the narrator is very often unreliable. During the period between the Civil War and World War 1, female writers gained for the first time some significance. Women authors were important mainly in realistic and regional writings. Edith Wharton (1862-1937), an admirered of Henry James, wrote also psychological novels, usually about the problems of women in upper-class society. Her most famous novels are The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) produced a large body of feminist fiction and theoretical writings.