The Problem of American Realism

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Author :
Release : 1993
Genre : Education
Kind :
Book Rating : 022/5 ( reviews)

The Problem of American Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Problem of American Realism write by Michael Davitt Bell. This book was released on 1993. The Problem of American Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great development in American post-Civil War fiction. Yet there are many problems with this generalization. It is virtually impossible, for example, to extract from the novels and manifestoes of American writers of this period any consistent definitions of realism or naturalism as modes of literary representation. Rather than seek common traits in widely divergent "realist" and "naturalist" literary works, Michael Davitt Bell focuses here on the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. Bell argues that in America, "realism" and "naturalism" never achieved the sort of theoretical rigor that they did in European literary debate. Instead, the function of these ideas in America was less aesthetic than ideological, promoting as "reality" a version of social normalcy based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. What effects, Bell asks, did ideas about realism and naturalism have on writers who embraced and resisted them? To answer this question, he devotes separate chapters to the work of Howells and Frank Norris (the principal American advocates of realism and naturalism in the 1880s and 1890s), Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Bell reveals that a chief function of claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist. Since the 1880s, Bell asserts, all serious American fiction writers have had to contend with this problematic conception of literary realism. The true story of the transformation of American fiction after the Civil War is the history of this contention - a history of individual accommodations, evasions, holding actions, and occasional triumphs.

The Problem of American Realism

Download The Problem of American Realism PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 1993-04-15
Genre : Education
Kind :
Book Rating : 015/5 ( reviews)

The Problem of American Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Problem of American Realism write by Michael Davitt Bell. This book was released on 1993-04-15. The Problem of American Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great development in American post-Civil War fiction. Yet there are many problems with this generalization. It is virtually impossible, for example, to extract from the novels and manifestoes of American writers of this period any consistent definitions of realism or naturalism as modes of literary representation. Rather than seek common traits in widely divergent "realist" and "naturalist" literary works, Michael Davitt Bell focuses here on the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. Bell argues that in America, "realism" and "naturalism" never achieved the sort of theoretical rigor that they did in European literary debate. Instead, the function of these ideas in America was less aesthetic than ideological, promoting as "reality" a version of social normalcy based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. What effects, Bell asks, did ideas about realism and naturalism have on writers who embraced and resisted them? To answer this question, he devotes separate chapters to the work of Howells and Frank Norris (the principal American advocates of realism and naturalism in the 1880s and 1890s), Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Bell reveals that a chief function of claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist. Since the 1880s, Bell asserts, all serious American fiction writers have had to contend with this problematic conception of literaryrealism. The true story of the transformation of American fiction after the Civil War is the history of this contention - a history of individual accommodations, evasions, holding actions, and occasional triumphs.

American Realism

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Author :
Release : 1983
Genre : Realism in literature
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Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

American Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook American Realism write by . This book was released on 1983. American Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism

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Author :
Release : 2019
Genre : Literary Criticism
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Book Rating : 890/5 ( reviews)

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism write by Keith Newlin. This book was released on 2019. The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism offers 35 original essays of fresh interpretations of the artistic and political challenges of representing life accurately. Organized by topic and theme, essays draw upon recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies to offer an authoritative and in-depth reassessment of major and minor figures and the contexts that shaped their work. One set of essays explores realism's genesis and its connection to previous and subsequent movements. Others examine the inclusiveness of representation, the circulation of texts, and the aesthetic representation of science, time, space, and the subjects of medicine, the New Woman, and the middle class. Still others trace the connection to other arts--poetry, drama, illustration, photography, painting, and film--and to pedagogic issues in the teaching of realism"--

American Realism

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Author :
Release : 1994-01-01
Genre : Painting, American
Kind :
Book Rating : 888/5 ( reviews)

American Realism - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook American Realism write by Edward Lucie-Smith. This book was released on 1994-01-01. American Realism available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. An exploration of the American realist tradition. It discusses and displays the most important work of the different groups and schools, including American Impressionism, the Ashcan School, Precisionism and Urban Realism. Featured artists include Georgia O'Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Eakins.