The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary IdeaEver since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great development in American post-Civil War fiction. Yet there are many problems with this generalization. It is virtually impossible, for example, to extract from the novels and manifestoes of American writers of this period any consistent definitions of realism or naturalism as modes of literary representation. Rather than seek common traits in widely divergent "realist" and "naturalist" literary works, Michael Davitt Bell focuses here on the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. Bell argues that in America, "realism" and "naturalism" never achieved the sort of theoretical rigor that they did in European literary debate. Instead, the function of these ideas in America was less aesthetic than ideological, promoting as "reality" a version of social normalcy based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. What effects, Bell asks, did ideas about realism and naturalism have on writers who embraced and resisted them? To answer this question, he devotes separate chapters to the work of Howells and Frank Norris (the principal American advocates of realism and naturalism in the 1880s and 1890s), Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Bell reveals that a chief function of claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist. Since the 1880s, Bell asserts, all serious American fiction writers have had to contend with this problematic conception of literaryrealism. The true story of the transformation of American fiction after the Civil War is the history of this contention - a history of individual accommodations, evasions, holding actions, and occasional triumphs. |
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aesthetic American fiction American literary American realism apparently Art of Fiction artist assumptions Badge of Courage Basil Boston Bostonians career chapter characters Clemens Connecticut Yankee Criticism and Fiction Deephaven Dreiser Dunnet Landing Essays on Literature fact fantasy father finally Frank Norris Hank Hank's Henry James Howells's Howellsian realism Huck Huck's Huckleberry Finn humor Hyacinth ideas imagination important insists instance irony James's Kirk language least Letters literary history literary naturalism literary realism Maggie Mark Twain masculine McTeague men's activities narrative narrator narrator's naturalist never Norris's novel novelist Octopus Olive Pointed Firs political Princess Casamassima problem published reader realist thinking reality recognize Red Badge romance Sarah Orne Jewett seems sense sentiment Sister Carrie social sort Stephen Crane story style Sylvia Theodore Dreiser things tion Todd told Trilling University Press Verena W. D. Howells White Heron William Dean Howells women world of men's writes wrote York Zola