美国文学简史（九）

Chapter 3   The Age of Realism(现实主义)
I. Background: From Romanticism to Realism
II. Characteristics
III. Three Giants in Realistic Period1.William Dean Howells 2.Henry James3.Mark Twain – Mississippi
IV. Comparison of the three “giants” of American Realism

 美国文学简史之现实主义时期

 Background: From Romanticism to Realism

1.The three conflicts that reached breaking point in this period(1)  Industrialism (工业) vs. Agrarian（农业） 
(2) Culturally-Measured East vs. Newly-developed West
(3)  Plantation Gentility vs. Commercial Gentility
2. 1880’s Urbanization（城市化）:from free competition to monopoly capitalism(垄断资本主义)
3. The closing of American frontier

Characteristics

1. truthful description of life
2. typical character under typical circumstance
3. objective rather than idealized, close observation and investigation of life
“Realistic writers are like scientists.”
4. open-ending:  Life is complex and cannot be fully understood. It leaves much room for readers to think by themselves.
5. concerned with social and psychological problems, revealing the frustrations of characters in an environment of sordidness（肮脏的） and depravity（堕落；腐败）

Local Colorism 1860s, 1870s~1890s

I. Appearance

1. uneven development in economy inAmerica

  2. culture: flourishing of frontier literature, humorists
 3. magazines appeared to let writer publish their works

II. What is “Local Colour”?  Tasks of local colourists: to write or present local characters of their regions in truthful depiction distinguished from others, usually a very small part of the world.
Regional literature (similar, but larger in world)
Garland, Harte – the west
Eggleston – Indiana
Mrs Stowe
lJewett – Maine
Chopin – Louisiana

Mark Twain – Mississippi

1. Works(1) The Gilded Age
(2) “the two advantages”
(3) Life on the Mississippi
(4) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(5) The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug

2.Style(1) colloquial language, vernacular（本地话，方言）language, dialects
(2) local colour
(3) syntactic feature: sentences are simple, brief, sometimes ungrammatical
(4) humour
(5) tall tales (highly exaggerated)
(6) social criticism (satire on the different ugly things in society)

本文为节选，来源：沪江英语

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