Realism and Naturalism Around 1900 Summary PDF

# Realism and Naturalism around 1900 ## A) REALISM ### a) Historical and Cultural Context Industrialization led to a shift of atmosphere (environment of being in factories). * Factories = temples which were worshipped (by working in them). * Description of the thoughts and opinions of the middl...

# Realism and Naturalism around 1900 ## A) REALISM ### a) Historical and Cultural Context Industrialization led to a shift of atmosphere (environment of being in factories). * Factories = temples which were worshipped (by working in them). * Description of the thoughts and opinions of the middle class (workers). - World´s Columbian Exposition 1893 in Chicago: * Celebration of technology, whiteness of people and Anglo-Saxonness. => White City = ideal model city based on the principles of scale, harmony, ensemble. * Electricity = power of the world. * This exposition embodies the spirit of power to change the world with progress (through industrialization). => Urbanization: more architecture and a higher population density. The creative power of construction indicates a new way of beauty and material reality. BUT: - Increase of population density in cities. - Naturalization of developments of urbanization. - Romanticization of primitive cultures in the southwest living in an environment completely made of stone. Industrialization and urbanization leaded to an economic crisis: - Harsh and slum labor, living conditions of the working class: low wages, child labor, adults had to work for the whole day, dirt, not enough space. - "New Immigration"-movement developed a new immigration law (since 1880). People who were not protestants/Puritans were considered strangers. Most immigrants were from non-English speaking countries (eastern Europe). Immense influx of immigrants led to a restriction of total annual immigration. => Fabric (Gefüge) of the people in the city changed magnificently. → Capitalism, political corruption, social divide (poor vs. rich), violent labor disputes wanted to fight for better working conditions. => Authors of realism focus on people´s feelings and thoughts during this new life. - Realism as the most significant literary movement between the end of the Civil War (1861-1865) and the beginning of WWI (1914) = certain period (ca. 1865-1914) →Gilded Age. Realism as a mode of literary representation of the here and now: - Non-metaphysical approach to reality by focusing on perception. * Present becomes more important than the past, fidelity to the actual. - Focus on description of experiences (as a reaction against romanticism!). - Documentation of the visible and material world with attention to details (verisimilitude!). ### b) Theorists: **William Dean Howells:** & his classic work: "The Rise of Silas Lapham" - Theorist of Am. lit. realism. In his opinion the task of realism literature is: - Reveal America´s democratic potential because it provides individual and economic experiences. - Show the poetry in the quotidian (because every day is worth of attention). => Turn towards reality. His essay "Criticism and Fiction" (1891) is a good source about realism! Realism…must be as close to reality as possible & represents the here and the now. **Henry James:** his work "The Art of Fiction" (1884). Features of realism literature: * Odour of the real (sense of reality) * Illusion of life: ability to create in the reader not only a sense of not only reading reality, but also of feeling reality! * Solidity of specification: precise and detailed descriptions to create an atmosphere in which readers can merge/dive in. * Truth of detail: physical objects, precise words of characters (thoughts, emotions, sensations) and close observation. => Achieve: the aura of real life and a reality effect! ### c) Aesthetic Principles of Realism: * Social analysis becomes more important, so there are rather non-heroic characters. * Focus on characterization of the figures (so you know exactly what type of person a character is). * Dialogue and objective narration instead of an auctorial evaluation of the narrator´s opinions. => Readers are to build their own opinions and judgement based on their experience of the story. * Verisimilitude: wealth of descriptive detail, no fantasy. * Probability: everyday events and contemporary urban settings to be as close to reality as possible (events that could probably happen in real life). * No (happy) ending/closure. ## B) NATURALISM: **• Mark Twain:** "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" Features of American Naturalists: * Emerging consumerism. * Characters deprived of free will and pushed to each action by the fatality of their flesh => people who HAVE to work: businessman, immigrant, showgirl, prostitute. => People self defined by heritability & instinct and milieu (environment). e. g. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane. - Pay attention to the ugly things to create sympathy towards ugliness (which was the reality of many lives during industrialization). - Dismissed realists as too genteel (since realists focus on the upper middle class with good manners and on people who have a certain mind of free will.) => Instead: interest in absence of freedom and in subjects that hadn´t made it into literature yet. Emphasized absence of morality from evolutionary processes and fiction. Mew settings: tenement (Mietswohnung), stockyard (Viehhof), sweatshop (Kiosk), department store (Kaufhaus). Naturalist authors: The City as a place where desire and despair meet. **• Stephen Crane:** * Identified with the urban poor (poor people in the city). => Important: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) => despair of a young woman who grew up in a poor urban environment, became a prostitute and eventually commits suicide. => Description of ugly things (like dirt, bad living conditions). **• Upton Sinclair:** - Organized the EPIC, a socialist reform movement for workers´ rights. Muckraking as a form of investigative journalism in order to uncover dirt. => Important work: The Jungle (1906) = muckraking novel about the meatpacking industry around 1900, set in the stockyards of Chicago. => Detailed description of themes there: food safety, immigration, survival, exploitation,... • **Theodore Dreisser:** his social standing was not what he desired, he felt underprivileged . - He studied even though his family was poor, because for him the middle-class standards were irrelevant. => Important work: Sister Carrie (1900): a young woman who rises from a farm girl to a theatrical star & realises that she needs to change to be successful => moves to the city. # American Modernism: A New Aesthetic Modernity VS. Modernization VS. Modernism - Historical era defined by - Transition from a agrarian - Radical shift in cultural capitalism to a modern, industrial society sensitivities (Verständnis) industrialization more complexity & efficiency - Art & lit respond to force rationalization modernization secularization opposition to realism - Institutionalization => Focus on formalism (mehr äußere Ausgestaltung als inhaltliche) - Interest in the vitality of the exotic and the primitive - Twist point: 1910 => change of human relations => change in religion, conduct, politics & lit. - New ways to communicate. - The Armory Show (1913); Internat. Exhibition of modern Art. - New genres in art & lit: * Impressionism * Expressionism * Symbolism - WWI (1914-1918) → Modernism in Poetry & Prose ## a) Experimental Modernists: in Poetry **① Ezra Pound:** "1st self-conscious modernist" - Language=medium of exchange of meaning/significance. Restoration of broken & distorted meanings (verzerrte Bedeutungen). - Fascination with absolute power - ideological move towards facism. - Poetic credo (philosophy): focus on Imaginism by strengthening the perceptive faculties (Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit). - The poetic image:- striking representation of a moment/feeling/idea communicated through precise language & sensory detail. => Conveying the subject directly so the experience feels immediate & tangible. => Precision & brevity of words. - Emotional & intellectual resonance with readers. => Fusion of sensory & intellectual perception "sense of sudden liberation, freedom, growth". - He was inspired by Chinese poetry: images encapsulate moments of profound understanding". Image = vortex (Wirbel) creates a shock of recognition. **• T.S. Eliot (studied philosophy)** - "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) => Impersonal lobjective poetry. Simultaneous perception of past and present (Gleichzeitige Wahrnehmung). => Knowledge of the past influences perception of the present and vice versa. - déjective correlative: objects/situations = formulas for emotions. **Work:-The Waste Land (1922):** - Critique (Gegenseitiger Einfluss auf Wahrnehmung) of modern society because of its cultural decay (Verfall/Niedergang). - Mythic method & allusions (Anspielungen). **-The Love Song of J. Alfr. Prufrock (1917):** shows disintegration of life & mental stability: lacks & shortcomings in Ps life. - Stream of consciousness - Exploring the inner self of characters - Reflects fragmentary nature of modern man´s mentality - Negative aspects of modern life. **• Gertrude Stein** - Words = linguistic objects - Language - creative substance - Style: repetition, substitution, combination (of words, phrases, etc.) - Reading as association & flow btw. sense and non-sense. **- Works: "From Tender Buttons" (1914)** - Creative destruction: Destruction of the Old & Creation of the New - she opened space for experimentation and new ways of seeing & understanding the world. => Art=medium that must constantly reinvent itself by deconstructing past assumptions & rebuilding on innovative foundations: destroying to create. - **Characteristics of modernism** * Free verse. * Fragmentation * Multiple points of view * Contradictory allusions (ggsātal. Anspielungen) => Characters have multiple personalities ## Modernism in the novel **• John Dos Passos** - Switched from being left-wing to being more conservative in the 1950s. - Important work: "Manhattan Transfer" (1925). * Inspired by Eliot´s "The Waste Land". => Focus on development of urban life from the Gilded Age (1870-18905) to the Jazz Age (19205). - Style: -experimental (multiple characters, narrative collage, fragmentation). - Cinematic narrative technique - Dramatic Action. ## 4 Literary Types of modernity & Modernism: 1. Critique of modernity articulated in premodern (nonmodernist, or antimodernist) literary forms. 2. Expression of the themes of modernity without employing modernist forms. 3. Critique of modernity articulated in modernist form. 4. Writing that was both premodern and modernist. => Harlem Renaissance as triumph of American Modernism. # The Harlem Renaissance (1919-1934) - New Negro Movement; Harlem as Negro Capital of the world. - Political & cultural representation of THE NEW NEGRO. - Dialogue between modern European Art & the folk art of black america. - Music and folklore as black contribution to american culture (DuBois, he even engaged with the civil rights movement for black people!). The Great migration (1910-1940): during WW1 was a great migration to the north by Southern Negroes (because of racism in the South). ## Intellectual pioneers: ### a) Booker T. Washington: - acceptance of segregation but call for toleration: = He wanted equal rights for black and white people, but in the South it would be better for black people to be inferior to whites. => They should make their social position better only through education. - Founded the National Negro Business League, so black civils can get better jobs. ### VS. ### Du Buois: - wanted equal rights & emancipation for black people immediately. - Dissertation: The suppression of the African Slave Trade in America (1895). - Linked racial liberation with critique of capitalism & imperialism (they are bad for racial liberation). - The talentet Tenth (1903): - The souls of black folk (1903): * Metaphors: double consciousness, the Veil, the color line. => Art = medium to synthesize the twoness & rend the Veil. ### Alain Locke (philosoph of the Harlem renaissance): The survey Graphic Haarlem Number; ### old negro VS. new negro - More a formula than a human being: sth condemned, to be argued about, kept down, ...(you either accepted it or u didn`t). - Educated, intellectual, urban, cosmopolitan, middle-class. - Self-respecting & self-depending. - Entrepreneurial (unternehmerisch). - Philanthropic (benevolent&charitable). ## Major writers of the harlem renaissance: ### a) Claude McKay - Poet & novelist - If we must die (1919): wants to die nobly => wants equal rights for black people; sonnet. ### b) Zora Neale Hurston ### c) Jean Toomer - Series of poems & short stories about black life in Am (South & washington). ### d) Nella Larsen: Passing (1929): * figure of the "tragic mulatto" = stereotype fictive figure, who is mixed & is depressed because the don`t know if they are considered white or black. * Racial & sexual ambiguity. * Liminal spaces (= where reality feels different because of changes). ### Langston Hughes: identified with the Harlem Renaissance - The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921): * open experimental language (like modernism lit.) * Influence of jazz & blues on his poetry. * Lit & art must be rooted in race pride. => You have to be proud of your race to make good art/lit. * Anchoring (Verankerung) of the modern black self in the ancient past and African/american landscape. - The negro artist and the racial mountain (1926): * You cant be a great artist if you aren´t proud of your race. * Mountain as barrier standing in the way of any true Negro art in Am. because of urge towards whiteness, lack of racial individuality through Am. standardization: be as much amarican and as litle negro as possible!!! => You have to climb over the mountain to produce true negro art!!!! Harlem renaissance and white patronage: white people support Harlem. ### Carl Van Vechten: Nigger Heaven (1926):CONTROVERSIAL TITLE * Novel depicts Harlem nightlife during the 1920s. * Fueled "Harlemania" among whites. # WW1 and after: The lost generation - This literary movement reflected on the lostness of this generation during and after WW1. = Writers as representators bc nobody else wanted/could talk/write about it. - Iconic generation because the survivors lost their life, themselves and their nation. ## Historical context: WW1 (1914-1918) - New war technology: machine gun, chemical weapons, submarines. - Casualties: 8.5 Mio soldiers, and even more civilians. = A culturally magnificent war aka The Great War. ## Writers of the lost generation: ### a) Ernest Hemingway - Was a soldier and thus part of the lost generation. - In Paris he was influenced by modernist writers. - Middle-class - Novel: A Farewell to Arms (1929): experience/setting of WW1. * Lovestory of a command and a nurse during WW1. * They fell in love during conversations about life, death, patriotism (ethernal themes authors of the lost gen. wanted to write about). * They tried to escape the war scene, she lost their child => tragedy. * As an orphan Frederic feels nostalgia for a lost home which he couldnt go back to. => Sense of lostness, but other than that no reference to the emotions, only bare facts * During war Passini is naive. * Coexistence of tragedy & banality = senselessnss of war. * Hero code: sb who is wounded must be an hero! => integrity, dignity, courage = virtues => The more courage you have, the earlier you die (because the world has to kill brave people to break them). * Loss of abstract values & virtues = devaluation. * Iceberg theory: most of a situation is beneath the water. - Nick-Adams-Stories: represent him as a story writer. ### b) Scott Fitzgerald - One of the most celebrated novelists of the Jazz Age. - The Great Gatsby (1925): Themes & motives * Honesty vs. the corruptive influence of wealth. * Modern living. * Automobile = symbol of material success & allegory for acceleration of modern life. ### c) John Dos Passos ### d) Gertrude Stein ### e) Malcolm Cowley: - Exile´s Return (1934/1951): War = relief from boredom by spicing up ur life with an adventure, creates a thirst for danger in young men. Danger made it possible to write once more about eternal topics (love, adventure, death). - Psychological state of aspiring writers: * Young men were too immature to understand the doctrine of complete despair about the modern world. * Puritan standards directed their lives. * Longing for new themes. * There was no writer who represented the lost generation, so there had to become one being modern: * Virtues vs. rejection of Puritan virtues/traditions. ### The lost generation: = generation of writers who… - Lost their attachments to any region or tradition (a home to which the couldn´t get back) because the prior world has changed => tendency towards nostalgia. - Were repelled by the boredom of a middle-class existence. - Came off age (wurden erwachsen) in a paradoxical world of a cosmopolitan education and an increasing call for patriotism. - Experienced the war as spectators. - Tried to live in exile. ## Culture after WW1: - Greenwich Village as the new neighborhood of writers, political activists since the 1910s. - Prohobition of alcohol, but illegal consumption. - Jazz, advocacy (support) of free love. - 1920: Women Voting Rights. - Bohemian vs. bourgeois; ethics of licentiousness vs. capitalist work ethics. - The flapper: women changed themselves. * Carefree, short hairstyles, stylish, low neckline. # Economic crisis (Wirtschaftskrise) and the lit. of social realism (1929-1941) ## Socioeconomic context: - Great stock market crash (Börsencrash) of 1929 (wall street crash). => Consequences: * Dramatic rise of unemployment => poverty. * Social & racial conflicts. * Collective trauma. => The Great Depression because everyone lost money (businesses closed and people lost their savings). ## Environmental context: - Migrant workers. - Dust Bowl (Staubschüssel): a series of storms with dust in the middle of the west. => A decade of drought (Dürre). - Route 66 (from Chicago to L.A.) = US Highway main street of Am. ## New deals: = Initiatives taken by Pres. Roosevelt to alleviate the economic crisis. - First New Deal: * National Recovery Administration. * Agricultural Adjustment Act. * Civilian Conservation Corps. - Second New Deal: * Works Progress Administration & Farm Security Administration. ## Cultural context: - A nation´s culture is defined by the cultural patterns that organize the everyday lives of ordinary people. => (Realist) writers draw their material from those lives. - Federal Writers Project: American Guide Series ("describe America to America"). => Was created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers and to develop a history overview of the US. - Farm Security Administration. Documentary Photography (Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White). # The literature & art of social realism: the Documentary Mode: - James Agee & Walker Evans: Let us now praise famous men (1941): * Magazine articles to document the living conditions of white sharecropping families in the South (Teilpacht; former slaves were given an opportunity to participate in the economy). * Documents 8 weeks in the lives of 3 families with text & documentary photography. Key elements: * Empathy and authenticity: presentation of farmers´ struggles & resilience with respect and dignity. => Faithful & immersive portrayal of the farmers´ existence. * Attention to Detail & Everyday life to convey the reality of their lived experience. ## The narrative Mode: ### Novel of the social realism: • **Native Son (Richard Wright):** * Wright influenced by Marxist thinking. * Stylistic proximity to naturalism. * Themes: oppression, brutalization, black self-affirmation through violence. AND social compassion of Marxism / communism. * Dealed with the inequities of the social structure of Am. • **Grapes of wrath (John Steinbeck):** * Focus on a family of impoverished (verarmte) farmers, the Joads. * Response to the ecological & economic hardships in the 30s. * Realistic descriptions of the Joads` migration across the country to California (through Highway 66 as the main migrant road). * Combines biblical references (exodus) with socialist labor politics. ## Writing as political action: - "Call for an American writers´ congress": * Capitalist system crumbles. * Writers recognize the necessity of personally helping to accelerate the destruction of capitalism. * Informing about problems. * It was to take place in May 1935, writers who wanted the decay of capitalism and a revolution. = The wish of fulfilling political aims together. # Theater/Drama: - Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty (1935): - One-act agitprop play (Agitation & Propaganda) => political drama. - 7 vignettes. - Confrontations of workers & capitalists => typologization (interpretation through use of types oder making a type of dth/sb). - Call for strike.