21. Критический реализм второй половины XIX века: э.Диккенсон, г.Б. Стоу.

Realism – (1865-1915) - Realism is the presentation in art of the details of actual life.  Realism was also a literary movement that began during the nineteenth century and stressed the actual as opposed to the imagined or the fanciful.  The Realists tried to write truthfully and objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary situations.  They reacted against Romanticism, rejecting heroic, adventurous, unusual, or unfamiliar subjects.  The Realists, in turn, were followed by the Naturalists, who traced the effects of heredity and environment on people helpless to change their situations.  American realism grew from the work of local-color writers such as Bret Harte and Sarah Orne Jewett and is evident in the writings of major figures such as Mark Twain and Henry James.

CRITICAL REALISM

Critical Realism as a trend in American literature reached full development after the Civil War. But already before it writers and men of reason turned their thought to the material environment around them. The deep-going changes in the country, the new type of human relations that had come into being compelled them to see man as a product of his environment, to deal with actual facts and realities. Hitherto writers had built their stories around ideal individuals through which they portrayed their own personal emotions and reactions. This no longer satisfied the new generation of writers; they realized that the people must be represented as a whole, the life of the individual interlinked with that of other human beings. The highly critical realistic literature that came into being differed greatly from that of the previous generation represented by Irving, Cooper and Longfellow. Critical Realism embraced all aspects of American life. Many of the old themes were the same but they were treated in a new light including that of love, and of the role of art and the artist in society. The romantic school had treated love as a refuge from the commonplace in practical life; the realists used the theme to show up the immorality of bourgeois society which made love and marriage a matter of business. The romanticists understood the role of art and the artist merely as a great power which could conjure up visions and influence the outlook of men and women; without denying this, realists also showed how the bourgeois commercialization of art and the artist could destroy the noble role of art and reduce it to a commodity. The realists saw man on the background of social conflicts of the day I and analysed human nature and human emotions in relation to this background. The reader could imagine the past and the future of each I literary personage because the development of the image was closely linked with the historical development of the present. The American realists rejected sentimentality and the "genteel tradition” in the style of writing. Their portrayal of life, as they found it, may sometimes have been rude and unpolished but it was always original and truthful. Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser were among the many writers of that period .whose works were I brilliant examples of mature realism. American Critical Realism developed in contact with European realism; it was greatly influenced by Balzac, Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy. But American realism enriched world realism by advancing the problems of social injustice, the Negro and Indian questions, the fate of the young generation and the problem of emancipation of women. American authors armed with the methods of Critical Realism created great works of art which served to unmask the truth about the reactionary foundations of modern imperialism, and served to greatly influence the struggle for social justice.

Emily Dickinson

Since most of her writing falls in-between defined literary movements, Realism and Modernism, there has been much confusion on which period Emily Dickinson fits into.  It is difficult to tell which movement she fits into, because she has qualities from both literary movements.  Her unconventional methods could place her with the Modernists, though, because Modernism was basically a rebellion against traditional writing ("Early Twentieth Century").  The most common characteristic of Modernism writing was an unpredictable style, which Emily Dickinson definitely has ("Early Twentieth Century").   Even though her writing does have a few traits of the literary movement that would take place after her, Modernism, she has more features of Realism.  Dickinson uses imagery in many of her poems, as well as personification (Fajardo-Acosta).  According to Paul Reuben, realists highlighted morality, as Dickinson did.  In fact, one of her most popular themes was death.  Realists often focused on things familiar to them, which was, for Dickinson, loneliness and religion ("American Realism").  Like Realists, Dickinson develops her characters fully, even if her character is something nontraditional, like the sun or death ("American Realism").  For example, in "The Sun Just Touched the Morning," she describes the sun in detail, saying that it is a happy thing, and if it stayed out all the time, more people would be happy.  Emily Dickinson could be a Realist because of her development of characters and themes, but could also be a Modernist because of her nontraditional style.  

Major Themes:

Death, Truth and its tenuous nature, Fame and success(negative attitude),Grief, Faith,…

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Seeking to portray reality as it is, realist writers frequently dealt with social abuses and the sordid aspects of human behavior and social life. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicted the horrors of slavery.

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues

Two of the historical issues that are important have already been referred to: evangelical Christianity, and the cult of domesticity. To this should be added the abolitionist crusade in the 1850s, the furor over the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the change in the temper of the country after the Civil War--a turn from moral to social reform, and from romanticism to realism in literature--which accounts for the change in the temper and tone of Stowe's writing in this period.

At her best, Stowe was an early and effective realist. Her portraits of local social life and her settings communicate the culture of her time. She provides us today a picture of the Florida of her time, the 1800s.