A House Divided and Restored 18601890 Authors Topics

A House Divided and Restored 18601890

Authors/Topics to be covered • • Walt Whitman’s Poetry Spirituals Frederick Douglass Abraham Lincoln Robert E. Lee Chief Joseph Henry Timrod’s Ode Mark Twain and the Rise of Local Color (onset of Realism) • Brett Harte • Ambrose Bierce

Shift in Literature from Romanticism to Realism • Consequence of a war that destroyed certain American illusions of innocence • Romantics concentrated on the extremes of existence, the inner life of the isolated individual or the mysteries of the universe (transcendentalists) • Post Civil War writers tended to emphasize the middle ground of life and common human problems in social settings

• Literary attention shifted from metaphysical questions to manners, customs, and ordinary relations of family, commercial, and social life • Tell a story – Here are your characters – Here is your setting

The dreadful drama of the Civil War • Exposed more human limitations due to casualties, assassination, etc. • South exposed to vindictive reconstruction policies • Industrial boom continues in North to focus on civilian goods – Telephone (1876) – Railroad expansion – New emphasis on oil and electricity – Immigration grew – Food production soared • Voices of reform were now silenced and nation focused on commerce and industry

1870 s---The Great Barbeque; Age of the Robber Barons; The Gilded Age (Twain) • “gilded”---Twain attempts to contrast the cheap and gaudy materialism of this time with the wisdom and humane values of the days of old • End of 1800 s, greater disparity between the rich and the poor, farmers and industrialists, and increase in corruption

Romanticism to Realism • • Thoreau and Hawthorne---DEAD Emerson---OLD Melville---SILENT Longfellow and Whittier---still POPULAR, but in an old fashioned sort of way • Walt Whitman provided a connection between the romantic idealism of the 1850 s and postwar realities

• Romantics concern with imagination, intuition, etc… • Realists place less emphasis on the imagination and more on observed fact (more scientific view)

Local Color and Regionalism • Regional differences highlighted through literature – Distinct patterns of speech, dialects, local customs, recognizable “characters” • Purpose of this style of writing was to familiarize Americans with their own nation • Local color transitions romanticism and realism – Pays attention to dialect, customs, etc. – Human emotion and motivation often sentimentalized

Local Color in the South • Humorous story or sketch • Concentrated on backwoods & frontier • Exploited crudity and violence of that life • Narrative elements were fistfights, shooting matches, practical jokes, hunting, and deceptive horse trades where the “hero” outcheats his rival • Relied greatly upon exaggeration

Local Color in the North • Best local color writers were women – Harriet Beecher Stowe & Sarah Orne Jewett • Irony is an important aspect to the writing • Writers wanted to transcend local concerns to illuminate universal issues of human life • Tried to create local character types that were true to human nature in any region

The Far West • New interest in California • San Francisco becomes financial and literary hub • Many writers tried to bring the West to mainstream, particularly Twain

Overall • Realism tended to restrict imagination • The movement toward regional interest, while valuable in emphasizing the special qualities of a region, threatened to make literature merely regional rather than national • Yet, through writers such as Twain, local color and vernacular humor became America’s voice carried to the world