Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism

Realism

•Ordinary people doing things in ordinary places, a slice of life

•Moral dilemmas

•Dominant during the 1870’s - early 1900’s

Major Writers

•William Dean Howells

•Editor of The Atlantic Monthly

•The Rise of Silas Lapham

•Mark Twain

•Stephen Crane

Major Writers continued

•Kate Chopin

•The Awakening

•Ambrose Bierce

•“A Horseman in the Sky” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”

•Henry James

•Novels about American expatriates in Europe and concern with psychology of perception

Major Writers continued

•Henry James continued

•“Daisy Miller,” The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove

Works by American painter JohnSinger Sargent

Regionalism

•Local color

•Attempts to capture the speech, geography, and customs of a specific region

•Bret Hart, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin

American painter Winslow Homer

Naturalism

•Darker side of realism

•Focus on the seamy aspects of life

•Treatment of human beings as animals driven by instinct and environment

•Jack London (Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf)

•Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie)

Naturalism continued

•Influences of Darwin, Marx, Nietzche, and (later) Freud

•1880’s - 1900’s