LTERATURE

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THE REALISTIC PERIOD (1865 – 1914)

THE GILDED AGE (1870 – 1900)

the Civil War – turning point in American history: before the war focus on human rights, after the war – progress and the self-made man

• rapid economic, technological, political, and social transformation

• period of greed, corruption, conspicuous consumption, and capitalism (robber barons)

• development of business, industrialisation

• transcontinental railroad completed in 1869

• Urbanisation and its problems (immigration, rapid population growth)

• Poverty (huge income inequality between wealthy and poor)

• modern America's formative period

• transition from a small agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation

LITERATURE

• Following the Civil War, American literature entered the Realistic Period • a reaction to Romanticism • faithful representation of reality in literature • emphasis on development of believable characters • written in natural vernacular, or dialect • Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James and Edith Wharton • Detailed depiction of ordinary characters and realistic events • Emphasis on characters from cities and lower classes • Themes: effects of industrialisation, alienation of a vulnerable individual • Avoidance of the exotic, sensational, and dramatic

REGIONALISM

• focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region • often called “local color” • coincided with realism and sharing many of the same traits • focus on periphery, small-town, rural life • often focus on the past

MARK TWAIN – born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910); • first thoroughly American writer • rejected European art, history, and cultural tradition • he turned to his native land for inspiration in subject matter and language • the first author to investigate the possibilities of American English • colloquial speech of common Americans • “My books are simply autobiographies”; personal experience

• Innocents Abroad (1869) – humoroustravel book written during a cruise to Europe, ridiculing his fellow travellers and European guides

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), based on the author’s childhood in Hannibal • faithful to minute details of setting, behaviour, or speech and idealistic or nostalgic about the past (realism and idealization: ‘local color’ fiction)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885): Twain’s greatest work; a picaresque novel in which young Huck Finn relates his adventures as he travels down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave • a satire on American society and the constraints of civilisation.