Movements Flashcards
(25 cards)
1650-1750
Puritain/Colonialism
1750-1800
Revolutionary/Age of Reason
1800-1860
Romanticism/American Gothic
1803-1882
Transcendentalism
1855-1900
Regional Realism
Define American Realism:
A style that depicted contemporary social realities and the lives/everyday activities of ordinary people.
Factors of regional Realism:
Social class, religion, race, dialect
Critics for Regional Realism
Emory Elliot: ‘Mark Twain transforms the American novel’
Jocelyn Chadwick: ‘learn about people and places we’ll never know’
Writers of Regional Realism:
Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Charles Chesnet
Define verisimilitude
The search for truth (Realism)
Who said this? ‘Failure is not the dark side of the American Dream; it is the foundation of it.’
Mark Twain
What is the Abolitionist movement?
Came about to abolish slavery, in literature black characters were shown as normal people
Define Naturalism
An extreme form of Realism, one that moved away from the middle class of the realists and pertained more to the dregs of society
Characteristics of naturalism
Industrial, lower class, the brute within, free will is an illusion
Critics of naturalism
Walcutt says that the naturalist novel offers ‘clinical, panoramic, slice-of-live’ drama that is often a ‘chronicle of despair’
Writers of naturalism
Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Richard Wright
Social Realism, social conscience:
Social class, ethnicity, and gender!
Writer of Social Realism:
Edith Warton ‘The Age of Innocence’
When was the civil war?
1861-1865
Post civil war writing decade
1870-80
Industrial revolution decade
1880-90
Age of immigration decade
1890-1900
Examples of transcendentalist texts/authors
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Leaves of grass by Walt Whitman
Little women by Louisa May Alcott
Transcendentalist
Focus on nature and the individual- negative about society
Does not look at god as a key part of society
