Michelle Ounkham Teddy Vang Dustin Trang

Gaochia Vang Michelle Yang

The Triumph of ScienceThe pace of science became faster and more advance. It became very influential in human thought. Industrial technology highly stimulated scientific research. Thus, there was an explosive growth of scientific discoveries

from 1830s onward.Thermodynamics: It based on Isaac Newton’s law of mechanics and the studies

of the steam engine. It inspected on the relationship between heat and

mechanical energy. By midcentury, physicists had developed the primary law of

thermodynamics, which were applied to mechanical engineering, chemical process, and etc.- The law of conservation of energy.

The Triumph of Science cont.Chemistry: 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleer (1834-1907) placed

the rules of chemistry into the periodic law and periodic table. Organic chemistry: the study of compounds of carbon.Electricity: In 1830’s & 1840’s, Michael Faraday’s (1796-1867) discoveries

in electromagnetism lead to innovations concerning electricity.The use in scientific research promoted an economic growth:

1880-1913.The significant consequences:1. Even though many people lacked scientific knowledge,

experiences implicated the magnitude of science on popular thinking.

2. Philosophical implications of sciences began to spread.3. Methods of science obtained unrivaled prestige after 1850.

Social Science and Evolution System of positive philosophy- Three different theoretical

conditions: Theological, Metaphysical, and Scientific (Written by Auguste Comte)

Positivist method- applying scientific method to society which eventually would lead to discover eternals of human relations.

Evolution- all forms of life had arisen through a long process of continuous adjustment to the environment

On the Origin of Means of Natural Selection- chance differences of a given species help some survive while others die (by Charles Darwin)

Had impact and influence on European thought and middle classes

Social Darwinism- those who believed in Darwin’s theories. Religious thought changed more to scientific thought with

a logical solution to everything

Realism In Literature Emile Zola, the giant of the realist movement in literature,

defended against his violently criticized novel against charges of pornography and corruption of morals.

Zola claimed: he was a scientist using…’the modern method, the universal instrument of inquiry of which this age makes such ardent use to open up the future.. I chose characters completely dominated by their nerves and their blood, deprived of free-will, pushed to each action of their lives by the fatality of their flesh…I have simply done on living bodies of work analysis which surgeons perform on corpses’.

Zola’s literary manifesto articulated the themes of realism, which emerged in the 1840’s and continued to dominate Western culture and style until the 1890’s .

Realist writers literature should depict life exactly as it was. Realists felt that facts spoke for themselves.

Realism In Literature Cont. Major realist writers focused their extraordinary powers of

observation on contemporary everyday life. Romantics searched for the exotic and sublime, but the

Realists pursued the typical and the common place. Many realists focused on the working classes, especially

urban working classes, which were neglected in imaginative literature before this time.

The realists put a microscope to many unexplored and taboo subjects- sex, strikes, violence, alcoholism- hastened to report that factories had savage behavior.

Many middle-class critics denounced realism as ugly sensationalism wrapped provocatively in pseudoscientific declarations and crude language.

Unlike the romantics who glorified individual freedom and an unlimited universe, realists such as Zola were strict determinists.

Realist movement began in France.

Realism In Literature Cont. The three greatest practitioners- Balzac, Flaubert,

and Zola- were French.Honore de Balzac: Wrote ‘The Human Comedy’ . Pictures urban society as grasping, amoral, and

brutal.Gustave Flaubert: Wrote ‘Madame Bovary’’ which is a story of a

frustrated middle-class housewife who has a love affair and is betrayed by her lover.

Portrays the middle class as petty, smug, and hypocritical.

Flaubert’s writing was far narrower in scope than Balzac’s work.

Prosecuted.

Realism In Literature Cont.Emile Zola Was most famous for his seamy, animalistic view of

working-class life. He eventually sympathized with socialism, and wrote

the overpowering novel Germinal in 1885.Realism swiftly spread beyond France. In England, Mary A. Evans. who wrote under the pen

name George Eliot, mastered a more deeply felt and less thrilling kind of realism.

Evan’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life examines the ways the social medium shaped their lives, which include their moral choices, inner striving, and conflicts.

Realism In Literature Cont.Count Leo Tolstoy In Russia, Tolstoy was the greatest realist who

combined realism and character development with atypical moralizing.

War and Peace was published in 1864. The novel set against the historical event of the

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. What comes around, goes around can be the modern

slogan of Tolstoy’s message. “regarded free will as an illusion and the achievements of even the greatest leaders” will come fatal.

People accepted and discussed about Tolstoy’s central message: human love, trust, and everyday family ties-which are life’s enduring values.

Realism In Literature Cont.Late message for the United States Realism arrived in the United States around the early

1900s. Theodore Dreiser leaded realism. Wrote Sister Carrie which outraged conventional

morality that the publishers withdrew from the book. In time, the United States became a mainstay of

literary realism in the twentieth century after the movement had faded in Europe.