History of British and American Literature2.ppt

Part IV The Literature of Realism
____The Gilded Age
in American History
Review
Question I: What are Puritan thoughts?
Question 2: What is Transcendentalism?
Question 3: Read and recite 2 pomes;
Question 4: Presentations for Romantic
writers;
II. The Literature of Realism
. Historical Background
. Definition of Realism
. Comparison with Naturalism
. American Realistic Writers
Historical Background
The over-triumph of mechanization
The waning of over-optimistic
Transcendentalism by the 1870s
Influence from European realistic
writers
The over-triumph of  mechanization
-----Northern industrialism triumphed over
Southern agrarianism;
-----discredit man’s value;
----widen the gap between the rich & the poor;
----give rise to a show-off
(The Gilded Age);P2,1st paragraph;
----accelerate the mobility ;
----big-city bossism, New York replaced Boston;
----increase federal government’s power;
Historical Background
-----Balzac
-----Zola
-----Flaubert
-----Tolstoy
------Honore de Balzac  (1799-1850)
"...Well, Balzac was politically a legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the irreparable decay of good society; his sympathies are with the class that is doomed to extinction ...."

(Friedrich Engels in 1888)
--------Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
best-known for MADAME BOVARY (1857), a story of adultery and unhappy love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. As a writer Flaubert was a perfectionist, who did not make a distinction between a beautiful or ugly subject: all was in the style.
-------Emile Zola (1840-1902)
"I am little concerned with beauty or perfection.
I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation." (from My Hates, 1866)
. Definition of Realism
Definition of the term
Actually, realism is a literary technique broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality " or “ verisimilitu