Genre Transition

     (1800 to 1860) American Romanticism                (1860 to 1914) American Realism

• • Ends with the United States Civil War                       Ends with World War I

  • Emotion and Intuition                                                  Tell the Story Exactly Like It Happened

  • Drawn to Nature                                                           Drawn to Cities and Community

  • Sonnets and Essays                                                      Whatever Maximizes the Truth

  • The Noble Savage                                                         City Folk and Soldiers

  • Embrace the Individual                                                We Need Each Other to Survive

  • The Common Man is Remarkable                              Ordinary Flawed Men with Ordinary Goals

The Realistic Hero (Does Not Exist)

• • Protagonists in Realism are most often ordinary people like you and me.

  • Realistic protagonists are not "on a quest" like Romantic heroes. They are most likely to be trying to meet a common immediate need. I need to survive. I don't want to get hurt. I am hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, tired, or lonely. I need to use the restroom. I need to protect my family, my friends, my love interest.

  • A happy ending to the story should not be expected. The odds of a Realistic protagonist succeeding at the story's goal is the same as it would be if any of us were put in that situation. Stories finishing with failure, pain, harm, and limited success are common.

  • Characters in positions of leadership are for the most part, common characters with rank with the same survival drive and selfishness. Often rank and privilege leads to corruption and abuse of that privilege, exactly as we expect the common man to do with too much power. 

AP Works - American Literature - American Realism - 1860-1914CE

• • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868) - Novel

  • The American by Henry James (1877) - Novel

  • Washington Square by Henry James (1880) - Novel

  • Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881) - Novel

  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885) - Novel

  • Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (1893) - Novella

  • The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895) - Novel

  • The Country of Pointed Furs by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896) - Novella

  • The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) - Novella

  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899) - Novel

  • Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900) - Novel

  • The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris (1901) - Novel

  • The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904) - Novel

  • The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905) - Novel

  • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906) - Novel

  • Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911) - Novel

  • Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson (1912) - Novel

  • O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913) - Novel