mark twain and realism
TRANSCRIPT
Regionalism & Local Color
1865-1920
• Literary Realism is a literary movement which began in the late 19th century.
• A literary technique devoted to "the faithful representation of reality"
• A reaction against romanticism
• Sparked by an interest in the scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy
REALISM
•Emphasizes
accuracy and
objectivity
•Depicts common,
everyday heroes
•Views the world
scientifically
•Focuses on real-
life situations
ROMANTICISM
•Emphasizes
imagination and
emotion
•Depicts larger-than-
life heroes
•Views the world
poetically
•Focuses on exotic,
supernatural, and
imaginary worlds
• Endeavored to accurately represent contemporary culture and people from all walks of life
• Addressed themes of socioeconomic conflict by contrasting the living conditions of the poor with those of the upper classes in urban as well as rural societies
• Sought to narrate their novels from an objective, unbiased perspective that simply and clearly represented the factual elements of the story
• Became masters at psychological characterization, detailed descriptions of everyday life in realistic settings, and dialogue that captures the idioms of natural human speech
•The Civil War
•Advances in Technology
•Advances in Science and Education
• Social Changes
• Increasing rates of democracy and literacy
•Rapid growth in industrialism
•Concern about loss of personal identity
The Civil War was a major cause of the rise of
realism in America. The four-year conflict:
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•destroyed cities,
industries, and
lives
•left bitter
memories and
economic
desolation in the
South
• Technological advances also contributed
to the rise of realism in America.
•Photography allowed people to see
real, sometimes dismaying, images of
war and poverty.
•Telephones and coast-to-coast
railways allowed more people than
ever to hear about events that
affected the nation.
•Advances in psychology, biology, and
geology contradicted long-held beliefs
about the nature of humans, the world, and
the universe.
•More people, especially women, minorities,
and the poor, had access to an education
and learned to read.
• Newspapers and the new mass-circulation
magazines were widely read.
•In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, outlawing slavery, was
ratified.
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•Industrialization led to overpopulation
and poverty in the cities.
•The agrarian economy of the South
was devastated by the war and by the
loss of slave labor.
•Many newly freed slaves and other
Southerners moved to Northern cities
looking for work.
• Local color or regional literature focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. This type of literature describes the details, even when unpleasant, of everyday life.
• Between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century, this mode of writing became dominant in American literature.
• Contains themes that center on contemporary society and on the lives of the middle and lower classes
• Features characters drawn from the poor and outcast of society
• Avoids extravagant language in favor of simpler, everyday diction
• According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, "In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description" (439).
• Regionalism is literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and reproduces the speech, behavior, and attitudes of the people who live in that region. Regional literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences within a locale.
• Regionalist writers differed from strict realists by portraying their characters in a somewhat sentimental fashion.
• For example, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain makes use of seven distinct dialects to represent the differences of various groups living in the region.
• Some important American regionalists are Sarah OrneJewett, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain.
•Contributed to the reunification of the country after the Civil War
• Helped build a national identity
•Contributed to the narrative of unified nationhood that late nineteenth-century America sought to construct
• Regionalism is a realist modern American art movement wherein artists shunned the city and rapidly developing technological advances to focus on scenes of rural life.
• Regionalist style was at its height from 1930 to 1935.
• During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Regionalist art was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland.
• In Regionalism works
the emphasis is
frequently on nature
and the limitations it
imposes; settings are
frequently remote and
inaccessible. The
setting is integral to
the story and may
sometimes become a
character in itself.
• Local color stories tend to be concerned
with the character of the district or
region rather than with the individual:
characters may become character types,
sometimes quaint or stereotypical.
• The characters are marked by their
adherence to the old ways, by dialect,
and by particular personality traits
central to the region.
• The narrator is typically an educated observer from the world beyond who learns something from the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from them.
• The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.
• It has been said that "nothing happens" in local color stories by women authors, and often very little does happen.
• Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the community and its rituals.
• Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a nostalgia for an always-past golden age. Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who seeks something from the community.
• Mark Twain
• Bret Harte
• Hamlin Garland
• Joel Chandler Harris
• William Faulkner
• William Styron
• Robert Frost
• Sinclair Lewis
• Henry James
• John Steinbeck
• Dashiell Hammett
• Kate Chopin
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Eudora Welty
• Sarah Orne Jewett
• Willa Cather
• Harper Lee
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka. Mark Twain, was a natural-born storyteller who was the first writer to recognize that art could be created out of the American language.
• Through his use of carefully chosen words and his sharply honed humor, he dealt head-on with controversial issues that others were afraid to confront.
• “Whatever you have
lived, you can write – &
by hard work & a
genuine apprenticeship,
you can learn to write
well; but what you have
not lived you cannot
write, you can only
pretend to write it...”
• Mark Twain is described as “an enormous
noticer.” Much of what he noticed as a boy
growing up in the small Mississippi River town of
Hannibal, Missouri, found its way into his
writings in books such as The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.
• He was always noticing whether people had
their hands in their pockets or not, how they
dressed, walked, spoke or presented themselves
to others.
• "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865) was Twain’s first great success as a writer, bringing him national attention.
• In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley and his “celebrated jumping frog”.
• Twain began his career as a journalist, travel writer, and writer of light, humorous verse.
• He evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies. and murderous acts of mankind, making frequent use of satire.
• At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism.
• A literary genre or form in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement.
• Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.
• A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm; it also makes frequent use of parody, burlesque, analogy, exaggeration, juxtaposition, and double entendre.
• Modern Examples: Animal Farm; Fahrenheit 451; Lord of the Flies; Saturday Night Live, “Doonesbury,” John Stewart; Stephen Colbert; The Simpsons; South Park
• Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.
• In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses seven different dialects and even provides an explanation for doing so …
