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Thomas Charles Farrer (1839-1891), Mount Tom, 1865. American Realism. 1850-1900 The Civil War and Post-War Period. Realists sought to accurately portray real life, without filtering it through personal feelings, romanticism, or idealism. Elements of Literature, 6 th ed (419). Response to.
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Thomas Charles Farrer (1839-1891), Mount Tom, 1865 American Realism 1850-1900 The Civil War and Post-War Period
Realists sought to accurately portray real life, without filtering it through personal feelings, romanticism, or idealism. Elements of Literature, 6thed (419)
Response to • Start of the Civil War • Rapidly growing cities and slums • Factories replacing farms • Corruption in politics (slavery, civil rights for women, immigrants) Children in Mullen’s Alley, photograph, Jacob Riis, 1888
American Realism • The world is what it is, and that can be awful and frightening • verisimilitude • accepting reality as reality • rejection of the sensational sentimental with focus on the ordinary man • loss of optimism; no rose-colored glasses • relied on facts and events • opened eyes to the fact that slavery undermined American values
New Voices, New Subjects • regionalism: added extreme detail to the setting; the setting was a character symbolically • naturalism: even more real; extremely detailed; pointed out darkness in our world • satire: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn satirists like Mark Twain and poets like Walt Whitman tried to ~keep it real.~