广东技术师范学院美国文学课件Unit5 American Realism and American Naturalism.pptVIP

Lecture 8 American Realism and American Naturalism The features The representative writers Mark Twain “The Gilded Age”: “an age of extremes”— “of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hope”. American Realism Realism Origin Reálisme, a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life. Definition William Dean Howells defines Realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of materials”. American Realism a verisimilitude of detail derived from observation a reliance on the representative in plot, setting and character an objective rather than an idealized view of human nature and experience Local Color “an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America” Local colorists Bret Harte (1836—1902) the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity his major concern -- the western mining towns in the pioneering days “The Luck of Roaring Camp” “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” “Tennessee’s Partner Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811—1896) a woman writer her object – “to interpret the world the New England life and character in that particular time of history which may be called the seminal period” Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) Oldtown Folks (1869) Kate Chopin (1850—1904) a woman writer her concern – the preservation of the American South Bayou Folk (1894) A Night in Acadie (1897) The Awakening (1899) Edith Wharton (1862—1937) a woman writer a mirror to the New York high society Souls Belated (1899) The House of Mirth (1905) The Custom of the Country (1913) Mark Twain (1835—1910) a local colorist in his earlier career his major works: The Adventure of Tom Sawyer (1876) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Life on the Mississippi (1883) The Gilded Age (1873) The Great Masters Mark Twain (1835—1910) William De