Warm-up –Answer these Essential Questions

1. Name a genre of the Realism period of literature?

2. How did a Realist writer tell a story?3. What was happening in America

during the Realism period?4. Name a writer from the Realism

period.5. Name a story or book from the period.6. What period of literature was an

outgrowth of the Realism period?

Time Periods of LiteratureRealism/Naturalism

These literary periods happened during the Civil War

and the years following the war (post-war years).

Georgia Performance Standard

• ELAALRL3: The student deepens understanding of literary works by relating them to their contemporary context or historical background, as well as to works from other time periods.

b. The student relates a literary work to the characteristics of the literary time period or historical setting; – ii. Realism– iii. Naturalism

Genre & Style of the Realism Period

did not tell reader how to interpret story

told the way it really happened Novels & ShortStories

dialogue included voices from around the country

stylegenre

Realism• Realism authors tried to tell it like

it really was in real life. They did not try to “sugar-coat” things or try to make things sound better

than they really were.

Historical Context of Romanticism• Civil war brought a demand for

a “true” type of literature that did not idealize people or places (that did not seek to make them sound perfect).

• The Civil War and the years after the war make up the historical context.

The harsh reality of frontier life, coupled with artists’ reactions to the Civil War gave rise to Realism.

(People were still moving westward.)Examples:

Ambrose Bierce’s “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge” and Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage

Ambrose Bierce

Stephen Crane

Red Badge of Courage – click black area to start video clip (1:43)

Red Badge of Courage – click picture to start video clip (2:50)

Red Badge of Courage – click picture to start video clip (1:05)

Willa Cather

was a Realist noted for her portraying the

loneliness and cultural isolation of life on the prairie.

She wrote “A Wagner Matinee” in which she

contrasted this isolation with the cultural richness (plays, concerts,

exhibits, etc.) of an eastern city.

Edith Wharton

She wrote fiction about the Eastern high society into which she had been

born. In The House of Mirth (1905), for

example, she wrote about conflicts between the newly rich and the old aristocracy and about

how social customs can prevent individuals from

fulfilling themselves.

NATURALISM

An important literary offshoot of Realism was Naturalism. Naturalist writers also depicted real people in real situations, but they believed

that forces larger than the individual – nature, fate, heredity –

shaped individual destiny.

Jack London (Naturalism)• He set much of his fiction in Alaska, where

the environment was cruel and unforgiving. The theme of human endurance in the face of overwhelming natural forces pervades his fiction, including the short story “To Build a Fire” and the novel, The Call of the Wild.

Georgia Performance Standard

• ELAALRL3: The student deepens understanding of literary works by relating them to their contemporary context or historical background, as well as to works from other time periods.

b. The student relates a literary work to the characteristics of the literary time period or historical setting; – ii. Realism– iii. Naturalism

Warm-up –Answer these Essential Questions

1. Name a genre of the Realism period of literature?

2. How did a Realist writer tell a story?3. What was happening in America

during the Realism period?4. Name a writer from the Realism

period.5. Name a story or book from the period.6. What period of literature was an

outgrowth of the Realism period?

1. Name a genre of the Realism period of literature?

• Short story• novel

2. How did a Realist writer tell a story?

•He made it like real life and did not

fantasize about it

3. What was happening in America during the Realism period?

• Civil War

• Bierce• Crane• Cather• Wharton

4. Name a writer from the Realism period.

5. Name a story or book from the period.

• Red Badge of Courage• A Wagner Matinee• The House of Mirth• Incident at Owl Creek

6. What period of literature was an outgrowth of the

Realism period?

• Naturalism