CHARACTERISTICS

WRITERS

HISTORICAL EVENTS

v       Trend rather than a movement; never formalized nor dominated by the influence of a single writer

v       A more extreme, intensified version of realism

v       Shows more unpleasant, ugly, shocking aspects of life

v       Objective picture of reality viewed with scientific detachment

v       Determinism – man’s life is dominated by the forces he cannot control: biological instincts, social environment

v       No free will, no place for moral judgment

v       Pessimism

v       Disillusionment with the dream of success; collapse of the predominantly agrarian myth

v       Struggle of an individual to adopt to the environment

v       Society as something stable, its predictability unabled one to present a universal human situation through accurate representation of particulars

v       Faith in society and art

  Prose:

Henry Adams  (1838 – 1918)

Hamlin  Garland   (1860 – 1940)

Frank Norris   (1870 – 1902)

Stephen Crane   (1871 – 1900)

Theodore Dreiser   (1871 – 1945)

Edith Wharton   (1862 – 1937)

Jack London   (1879 – 1916)

Sinclair Lewis   (1885 – 1951)

Upton Sinclair   (1878 – 1968)

John Steinbeck   (1902 – 1968)

  Poetry:

Edgar Lee Masters  (1869 – 1950)

1898 – Spanish-American War

1901 -  Theodore Roosevelt elected President

Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Lewis,       Babbitt (1922)

Dreiser    An American Tragedy (1925)