|
CHARACTERISTICS |
WRITERS |
HISTORICAL EVENTS |
|
v
life
presented with fidelity v
fidelity
in presenting the inner workings of the mind v
the
analysis of thought and feeling v
function
of environment in shaping the character v
set
in present or recent past v
colloquial
speech v
commonplace
characters v
exposed
political corruption, economic inequity, business deception, the
exploitation of labor, women rights problems, racial inequity v
described
the relationship between the economic transformation of America and its
moral condition v v
introduction
of a new kind of characters: ·
industrial
workers and rural poor ·
ambitious
businessman and vagrants ·
prostitutes ·
unheroic
soldiers v
rise
of what critic Warner Berthoff calls
“the literature of argument” – works in sociology, philosophy,
psychology. REGIONAL WRITING (“local color”) §
desire
to preserve distinctive ways of life before industrialization dispersed or
homogenized them §
coming
to terms with the harsh realities of the “new times” §
rapid
growth of magazines creating a new, largely female audience for short
fiction §
immortalizing
linguistic features §
many
colorists women describing a patriarchal society from female perspective |
Mark Twain (1835–1910) Henry James (1843 – 1916) William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920) “Local Color” Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909) Kate Chopin (1851 – 1904) Bret Harte (1836 – 1902) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935) Poetry:
Edward Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935) Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) |
1860 – Abraham Lincoln elected President 1861-65 –
Civil War 1863,
1 Jan – Emancipation Proclamation:
slavery abolished 1865 –
13th Amendment (abolition of
slavery) 1869 –
first transcontinental railroad 1870s –
few individuls take control of big industries: 1859 – Darwin’s The
Origin of Species 1870
– Darwin's Descent
of Man
James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Twain,
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Frost
The Road Not Taken (1916) |