The-Literature-of-Realism现实主义.doc

The Literature of Realism现实主义
Realism
u Realism had originated in France as réalisme ,a literary doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the depiction of ordinary life.
u Broadly defined as "the faithful representation真实表示 of reality", based on the dogma教条 of "objective reality客观现实", and was focused on showing everyday, quotidian activities and life, primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization
u Realism is, in the broadest sense, simply fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature......
u limited to the movement which arose in the nineteenth century, at least partially in reaction against Romanticism, which was centered in the novel, and which was dominant in France, England, and America from roughly mid-century to the closing decade, when it was replaced by Naturalism.

American Realism(1865-1918)
Backgrounds
1 The Civil War(1861-1865)
a deterioration(恶化) of American moral values
2 Increasing industrialization and mechanization
extremes of wealth and poverty
3 The frontier was about to close.
people began to feel a sense of suffering and unhappiness
4 Influenced by European literature

The Gilded Age(镀金时代）
u Mark Twain called the late 19th century the "Gilded Age."
u The period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath.
u “an age of excess and extremes”--of decline and progress, of poverty and dazzling wealth, of gloom and buoyant hope.
American Realism
u Realism first appeared in America in the literature of local color本土特色, and an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects方言, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America.
u Some representative local colorists include:
Bret Harte(1836—1902), the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Mark Twain

William Dean Howells(1837-1920)
u the arbiter(仲裁者) of American Realism

u He defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”
u subject matter: the experiences of the American middle class
u his works:
The Rise of Silas Lapham 塞拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹

American Realism has its salient特色的 features:
u Verisimilitude(逼真)of details derived from observation
u representative in plot, setting and character
u an objective rather than an idealized view of human experience
The schools of American realism
u Frontier Humor 边界
u Middlewestern Realism
u Cosmopolitan Novelists 世界性小说 Henry James
u Regionalism (local colorism)
u Naturalism 自然主义代替现实主义

Frontier Humor
It is the vital and exuberant丰富的 literature that was generated by the westward expansion 西进运动of the United States in the late 18th and the 19th centuries.
The spontaneity自发性, sense of fun, exaggeration夸张, fierce凶猛的 individuality, and irreverence不敬行为 for traditional Eastern values in frontier humor reflect the optimistic spirit of pre-Civil War America.
Frontier humor appears mainly in tall tales of exaggerated feats of strength, rough practical jokes (especially on sophisticated Easterners and greenhorns), and tales of encounters with panthers, bears, and snakes. These tales are filled with rough, homely wisdom.

Middlewestern Realism
u It just refers to William Dean Howells’s realism because he came from the American Midwest and carefully interweaved交织 the life and emotions of ordinary middle-class there in his works.
u Also because he was the champion of the realism, having helped to publish many realistic local color writings by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and others.

Cosmopolitan Novelists(世界小说）
u Henry James’s fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, the international theme, that is the meeting of American and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with complications arising there from. So he was called the cosmopolitan novelist.
Henry James: father of psychological realism心理描写 (1843 - 1916)
1. Brief account of his life:
1) He was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His father was an eminent philosopher and reformer, and his brother, William James, was to be the famous philosopher and psychologist.

2) Most of his life he settled down in Europe except for some visits to America. In 1915 he became the naturalized British citizen. He was not married but once loved his attractive cousin who died young.
3) A voluminous writer, he was influenced by some English, European and American writers. One American author who exerted a measure of influence on James is Hawthorne whose insight into the human psyche impressed the younger writer deeply.
2. His creative life
Ø The first period(1865-1882). The works in this period reveal James’ fascination with his “international theme”: How Americans behave in an international setting.
Europeans/ Americans
Innocence vs Experience
James’ attitude towards European culture: decadence, heritage.

• The American (1877)
• The Europeans (1878)
• Daisy Miller (1878)
• The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
• Washington Square (1881)
In these early works, James experiments with the limited point of view, and focuses on the “complex inner lives of his American characters” which are “fully and realistically projected”
Ø The second period (1882-1895). During this time he focuses on tales and plays, but most of them prove a failure.
• Novels in the naturalistic mode:
• The Bostonians, 1886 波士顿人
• Turning to three dominant subjects:
Troubled writers and artists
Ghosts and apparitions,
Doomed or threatened children and adolescents
• The Figure in the Carpet, 1896 地毯上的图案
• What Mazie Knew, 1897 梅瑟所知道的
• The Turn of the Screw, 1898 螺丝在拧紧
• The Beast in the Jungle, 1903 丛林猛兽
Ø The last one(1895-1909)
• Returning to international themes
• Novels complex and profound
• The Wings of the Dove, 1902 鸽翼
• The Ambassadors, 1903 奉使记
• The Golden Bowl, 1904 镀金碗
• Richness of syntax, characterization, point of view, symbolic romance, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhythms.

• famous for their intricate, dense narrative and “focus on the way in which people make their own realities through their perceptions and impressions”.

3. His literary-aesthetic ideas（see his The Art of Fiction）
1) Art must be related to life. It must be life transformed and changed so that the art form would give the truthful impression of actuality.
2) Though closely related to life, art is important in its own way. It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.
3) He was concerned with point of view which is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel.
4. His political-social ideas and attitudes:
1) The spokesman of the wealthy.
2) Be conservative toward overzealous reformers (the similar way of Hawthorne)
3) But he was critical of U.S. imperialist behavior and American’s obsession with business, its extremes of wealth and poverty, its lack of culture and sophistication.
4) Like Hawthorne, James regarded evil as essentially of inward cause and cure, advocated free willed renunciation of the low or mean, and repeatedly emphasized magnanimity and the beauty of goodness.

Theory of Fiction: The Art of Fiction, 1884
o The novelist must be faithful to life as it actually appears.
o There must be freedom for the artist to choose what subjects he will deal with.
o The novel must be regarded as an organic whole with every part of a functioning contributor to the achieving of the novel’s ultimate expression. The author must remain outside—the self-containment of art.
o Dramatization编剧: showing rather than telling
o Central consciousness through whom events are observed. Omniscient / limited POV
o Psychological realism: the first of the modern psychological novelists, a realist of the inner life
o Ambiguity

About Point of View
o The “center of consciousness”
o Limited POV, presenting the story through the filter of a single character or a succession of characters.
o He argues for characters of great sensitivity as his centers of consciousness, since the more they perceive of life the more the reader perceives.
About Fiction
o Fiction is a serious art form—not a pastime nor a game in which the reader indulges his daydreams—but an “imitation of life”. It deals with the larger truths of human existence that comprise the pattern behind the fact.

o Two qualities of fiction:
o Fiction should be made of experience intensely perceived (either from life or from imagination)
o Fiction should be interesting.
o The artist stories are not merely artist stories; the international works are not merely international conflicts. In both groups, in others such as the ghostly tales, and in still other stories not easily classified, one finds real people playing out real dramas of loneliness, suffering, and betrayal.

Themes
o Art
o The clash between the old European world and the new American world (“international theme)
o Conflict between more or less ingenuous Americans and sophisticated Europeans
o American good and European evil
o Innocent young American bumping into old enriched culture which is degenerate
o But his later works show a great awareness of complexity.
James’ place in American Literature
o Bridging the 19th and 20th c.
o Connecting America and Europe.
o A pioneer in psychological realism
o A “master craftsman”
o Criticized by some because of his focus on the elite (James deals largely with the moral and social problems of middle- and upper-class society. )
o Along with the increasing complexity of his style, his hypersensitive narrators, or protagonists, having alienated James from the common reader, as James himself realized.

Regionalism (local colorism) 地方
u Local Colorism as a trend became dominate in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s. It is a variation of American literature realism. Generally, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province.
u The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. Local colorists were consciously nostalgic（怀旧的）historians of a vanishing way of life, records of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. Mark Twain is a local colorist.
Local Colorism
o Local colorism as a trend became dominant in American literature in the late 1860s and early 1870s. It is a variation of American literary realism. Generally, the writings of local colorists are concerned with the life of a small, well-defined region or province

. The characteristic setting is the isolated small town. Local colorists were consciously nostalgic historians of a vanishing way of life, recorders of a present that faded before their eyes. Yet for all their sentimentality, they dedicated themselves to minutely accurate descriptions of the life of their regions. Mark Twain is a local colorist.
Mark Twain
o Twain preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. So the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the west became his major theme.
o Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896): Uncle Tome’s Cabin
o Hamlin Garland (1860-1940): Main-Traveled Roads
o Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902): The Luck of Roaring Camp
o William Faulkner (1897-1962): The Sound and the Fury
Name Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Pen Name Mark Twain
Stories about his pen name:
● “two marks” (about 12 feet/ 3.16 meters deep)
● a captain’s pen name
● always asking the bartender to mark
“two marks” in the bill
Born November 30, 1835 Florida, Missouri, U.S.
Died April 21, 1910 (Age 74) Redding, Connecficut, U.S.
His last years of life was filled with sad events, loneliness and the loss of much money.
◎ After leaving school:
a printer, a riverboat pilot, a soldier, a gold miner,
a businessman and a newspaper reporter
◎ First important work:
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (published in 1865)
◎Loving Mississippi River very much:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Life on the Mississippi.
◎Be famous for:
a great American writer, a famous speaker, especially his humor,
description of common people and the way they talked
Mark Twain’s works
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
　　《卡拉维拉斯郡著名的跳蛙》(1865)[ first famous important work ]
The Innocents Abroad《傻子国外旅行记》 (1869)

Masterpieces名作:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer《汤姆·索亚历险记》 (1876)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn《哈克贝里·芬历险记》 (1884)
The Prince and the Pauper 《王子与贫儿》(1881)
Other works:
Roughing It《艰难岁月》
Pudd'nhead Wilson《傻瓜维尔逊》
American Claimant《美国申请人》
The Gilded Age 《镀金时代》
Life on the Mississippi 《密西西比河上》
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court　《亚瑟王朝里的康涅狄格州美国佬》
The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug　《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》
The Mysterious Stranger 《神秘的陌生人》

Autobiography
Mark Twain’s Writing Features
1. local color represents social life through portraits of local places which he knew best drew from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places
tall tales (highly exaggerated)： a texture of most local color literature，humor
2. humor and satire
3. hyperbole and allegories
4. colloquial idioms and colloquial syntax
5. description of persons who was innocent, simple, naïve and ignorant as his heroes or heroines

Twain as a Realist
Realism
A Response to Romanticism
try very hard to capture life exactly as it was, rather than romanticizing it
rather than focus on emotion or prize it, realists try to prevent their works from being filtered through their emotional lenses
characters come from poorer, super-rural or super-urban backgrounds
Included workers at factories, people living in slums, etc. – the types of people who never showed up as romantic heroes

Twain is one of the greatest realists – possibly the greatest – of all time.
One of the reasons is that he’s so great that he dares to examine the “whys” – why does the society have problems? Why do characters experience conflicting emotions? Why do we act the way we do?

Helen Keller said: "I like Mark Twain . Who would not like him? Even God loves him very much, he gives him wisdom and paints a rainbow of love and faith in his heart."
海伦·凯勒曾言：“我喜欢马克吐温——谁会不喜欢他呢？即使是上帝，亦会钟爱他，赋予其智慧，并于其心灵里绘画出一道爱与信仰的彩虹。

”
He was lauded as the “greatest American humorist of his age,” and William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”
威廉·福克纳称马克·吐温为“第一位真正的美国作家，我们都是继承他而来”。

The Adventures of