Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

American Realism +/- 1860 - 1890

Time Period: Civil War – turn of the centuryDefinition: A faithful representation of realityInspiration: A renewed interest in scientific method, a systematic study of documenting history, and an influence of rational philosophyLiterary Context: Reaction against Romanticism

Satire

• Satire: An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards.

• Satire: the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence (A Handbook to Literature 428).

Realism Characteristics(from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition)

• Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail -- even at the expense of a well-made plot

• Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.

• Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.

• Class is important• Events will usually be plausible. • Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic.• Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important:

overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses.

RegionalismLocal color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region

• Setting: emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; frequently remote and inaccessible; integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself.

• Characters: 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. Characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. Narrator: 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.

• Plots. 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.

• Themes: Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity characterizes women's local color fiction. 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.

In groups of 3-4 (no more)

• What do we learn about Huck from what he reveals of others characters’ assessments of him?

• Make two columns, listing things Huck likes and dislikes as he reveals them in these chapters.

• What things does he have trouble understanding?• What are Huck’s feelings about his adoption by

the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson? • Huck’s upbringing is at issue with the book? What

has he been taught that forms his core self?

Two-Paragraph Summary and Response Twain’s “The Damned Human Race”

• In your first paragraph, summarize Twain’s “The Damned Human Race”– Use academic voice– Summarize Twain’s assertions objectively– Discern his most significant points– Do NOT interpret, evaluate, or inject your own opinion

• In the second paragraph, respond:– Use first-person “I” because I am asking for your opinion.– How do you interpret the essay?– Do you find it to be effective or ineffective? In what way?– With which points do you agree or disagree?

Donald Pizer's Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Revised Edition (1984):

[T]he naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions, and . . . the two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular aesthetic recreation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme and form of the naturalistic novel. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and the concept of man which emerges from this subject matter. The naturalist populates his novel primarily from the lower middle class or the lower class. . . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous, such as acts of violence and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and which culminate in desperate moments and violent death. A naturalistic novel is thus an extension of realism only in the sense that both modes often deal with the local and contemporary. The naturalist, however, discovers in this material the extraordinary and excessive in human nature. The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms the significance of the individual and of his life. The tension here is that between the naturalist's desire to represent in fiction the new, discomfiting truths which he has found in the ideas and life of his late nineteenth-century world, and also his desire to find some meaning in experience which reasserts the validity of the human enterprise. (10-11)

Rules for a Silent Conversation• It’s silent.• The “conversation” is written. If you want to disagree, agree,

question, comment, or otherwise engage, DO SO in-writing.• The prompts are “starters”; you may respond to the prompt

or to anyone else’s writing. Treat it like an actual conversation.

• Rotate, circulate. You will want to return to see if one of your comments has received feedback you’d like to respond to.

• As with almost all activities, your ability to take it seriously and be sincere makes-or-breaks its success.