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Unit 5 The Literature of Romanticism (1865—1900) l Key Words: Realism, Local Color Fiction, Naturalism l Target: This unit aims at introducing the American Literature from 1865 to 1900. This period is called American. The relevant literary history, the leading writers and their famous works will be fully discussed. l Study Points: 1. Historical Background; 2. Realism; 3. Local Color Fiction; 4. Naturalism l Teaching Hours: 16 (History: 8 hours and Reading: 8 hours) I. Historical Background 1. In the States three fundamental issues reached the breaking point in the period of 1865—1900. 1) The conflict between the agrarian ideal of Jefferson and the industrial ideal of Hamilton; (Stressed by economic historians) 2) The conflict between the plantation gentility of the South and the commercial gentility of the North, (Stressed by political historians) and 3) The conflict between a culturally mature East and a raw and expending West. (Stressed by literary and cultural historians. This period indicates the decline of Romanticism and the rise of Realism. ) 2. In post-bellum America, commerce took the lead in the national economy. Increasing industrialization and mechanization of the country, in full swing after the war, soon produced extremes of wealth and poverty. 3. The frontier was closing and a reexamination of life began. The worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the new world, began to lose its hold on the imagination of the people. Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. Disillusionment and frustration were widely felt. What had been expected to be a “Golden Age” turned out to be a “Gilded” one. II. Realism 1. Realism came as a reaction against “the lie” of Romanticism and sentimentalism. The battle between “idealists” and “realists” provide the major issue of American literary history after the Civil War. Literature began to pay less attention to general ideas and more to the immediate facts of life. 2. The realist movement took two forms: interest in one’s backyard and experimentation with more literal methods of writing 3. Realism In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of Realism came into existence. It came as a reaction against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism. Realism turned from an emphasis on the strange toward a faithful rendering of the ordinary, a slice of life as it is really lived. It expresses the concern for the commonplace and the low, and it offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. Realistic literature finds the drama and tension beneath the ordinary surface of life. A realist writer is more objective than subjective, more descriptive than symbolic. Realists looked for truth in everyday truths. William Dean Howells, the champion of the new school, by virtue of his powerful critical writings and of his generous patronage as the senior editor of Atlantic Monthly, made for the triumph of realism over romanticism. Two other staunch fighters for realism were Mark Twain and Henry James. 4. Features of Realism 1) Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. 2) In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth. 3) Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material. 4) Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people who are customarily ignored by the arts. 5) Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. 6) Realism presents moral visions. 7) Realists are aware of accepted social standards. 1. American RealismWilliam Dean Howells(1837—1920)As a critic, he wrote eight critical books about 1,700 book reviews expounding the principle of realism. He argued for realism against romanticism, attacked sentimentality of thought and feeling and the falsification of moral nature and ethical options. He held that fiction should be objective, should be dramatization of ordinary life, and should speak the language of actual people and true to the particulars of a recent time and a special place. (He defined realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.”) Thus he became the champion of literary realism in America. Among the most important of his 38 novels are his social novels: A Modern Instance (1882), A Woman’s Reason (1883), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889), and the Utopian romance A Traveller from Altruria (1894) During his sixty-year career, he published over one hundred books covering genres of fiction, drama, essay, biography, autobiography, travelogue, and literary criticism. Above all, he was the fearless champion of American realism. O. Henry(1862—1910)◆ Life Ø Known as O. Henry, William Sidney Porter was one of the most prolific modern American short story writers. Ø Born at Greensboro, North Carolina on Sept. 11, 1862. Mother died when he was 3. He was brought up by his aunt. Ø At the age of 20, he went to Texas where he spent his nest 15 years. Ø In 1887 he fell in love with Athol Estes and eloped for the marriage. Ø Later he secured a position as a clerk in a bank. Ø In 1897 he was accused of embezzling money. He was so frightened that he fled to Honduras to avoid arrest. Ø His wife became ill during his absence and he returned secretly to take care of her. But she died and then he was arrested and sentenced five years in an Ohio penitentiary. Ø While in prison, he took writing as away to kill time. In 1898 he began to use the penname “O. Henry” in his writing. Ø Due to his good conduct he was dismissed after about three years, and went to Pittsburgh to start a new life in 1901. Ø In 1907 he married his second wife Sara Lindsay Coleman. Ø He died at 48 on June 3, 1910. ◆ Literary Achievements Ø His short stories usually deal with some self-sacrificing member of a family who is under going hardship to help a close relative. Ø Although his plot is full of coincidence, the surprising ending is his specialty and appeals very much to his reader. (e.g. The Cop and the Anthem) Ø The list of Porter’s stories is long with about 300 titles. Some of the best known are the following: Cabbages and Kings (1904) The Four Million (1906) The Trimmed Lamp (1907) Heart of the West (1907) The Gentle Grafter (1908)
◆ Life Ø Henry James was born in New York City, and with his brothers, William, Garth and Robertson, received a remarkable cosmopolitan, eclectic education. Ø The father, desiring his sons to be citizens of the world, believed that they should avoid forming definite habits of living or of intellect, until prepared to make wise choices of their own. Ø Accordingly, Henry was privately educated by tutors until 1855, when the family went to Europe for a three-year stay. Ø He also lived for a time in Newport before he entered Harvard Law School (1862). Ø After 1866, although he lived mostly in Europe, his American home was at Cambridge. Ø His conception of himself as a detached spectator of life was maturing, as was his idea that the American scene was hostile toward creative talent and offered no adequate subject matter. Ø For the time being, however, he divided his interest between European and American materials. Ø During the late 1860s, encouraged by Howells and others, he wrote critical articles and reviews, exhibiting admiration for the technique of George Eliot, and also produced short stories, frequently showing the influence of Hawthorne, one of his masters. Ø His first important fiction was A Passionate Pilgrim, in which he deals with the first of his great themes, the reactions of an eager American ‘pilgrim’ when confronted with the fascinations of the complex European world of art and affairs. Ø The author himself during this period was often a pilgrim to the transatlantic world, which he came to regard as his spiritual fatherland, moving there permanently in 1875. Ø During a year in Paris he associated with such masters of his art as Turgenev and Flaubert, but after 1876 he made his home mainly in London, with which much of his writing is concerned. ◆ Literary Achievements James’ literary career can be divided into three main stages of development. 1. First Stage—developed the international theme in his novel Ø Strictly speaking, his first novel was Watch and Ward, publish serially in the Atlantic Monthly in 1871, and in book form in 1878. Unsatisfied with this work, he declared his first real novel was Roderick Hudson (1875), which mainly treated his views of England and Italy, and concerns with the failure of an American sculptor in Rome, resulting from a lack of inner discipline. Ø The American (1877), contrasting French and American standards of conduct; Ø The Europeans (1878), reversing the situation by bringing Europeans into a New England background; Ø Daisy Miller (1879), whose wide popularity is probably owing to its portrayal of a charming, ingenuous American girl; Ø An International Episode (1879), a novelette showing the reactions of Englishmen to the American scene and of an American heiress to aristocratic Britain. Ø In Washington Square (1881), James again revealed American character, this time in its native environment Ø The Portrait of a Lady (1881), was the first of his mature masterpieces, is a triumph of his method of psychological realism, analyzing the relations of a young American woman with a group of Europeans and expatriated Americans, who objectify her conscientious moral attitude, her sensitive appreciation, and her endurance under suffering. In nearly all of James’s fiction, the environment is one of affluence of leisure, in which the preoccupations are with manners and the appreciation of character and the arts, including that of conversation. He treats this society with an infinite refinement of particulars, and in a prose style considered to be unapproached in English for subtlety of phrase and rhythm. 2. Second Stage— experimented with various subjects and forms: 1) Naturalistic mode: (1886—1890) Ø The Bostonians (1886), a satirical novel of New England reformers and philanthropists Ø The Princess Casamassima (1886), a melodramatic story of revolutionaries and lower-class life in London, told, as all of James’s later fictions are, through the observations and reactions of one character, who usually remains outside the events. Ø The Tragic Muse (1890), 2) Plays: (1890—1895) He wrote seven plays and two of them were staged without success. 3) Three dominant subjects: troubled writers and artists, ghosts and apparitions, doomed or threatened children and adolescents (1895—1900) Ø The Turn of the Screw (1898) Ø The Beast in the Jungle (1903) 3. Third Stage— returned to his international themes Ø The Wings of the Doves (1902); Ø The Ambassadors (1903), a novel that shows the author’s genius for formal structure, as well as is discernment of the values of Old World culture; Ø The Golden Bowl (1904), his last completed novel, which also exhibits him at he height of his artistry. Ø His three autobiographical reminiscences : A Small Boy and Others (1913); Notes of Son and Brothers (1914); The Middle Years (1917) Ø The Outcry (1911) was his last novel. Two novels, The Ivory Tower and The Scene of the Past, were left unfinished. His formal critical writings, sufficient in themselves to establish an author’s reputation, were published in French Poets and Novelists (1878); Hawthorne (1879); Partial Portraits (1888), including The Art of Fiction. His artistry was conscious at every point, but his intellectual perceptivity in later life seemed to make him a rarefied observer, apparently largely out of touch with many of the more commonplace realities of his times. His eminence in the realm of his choice, however, is unquestioned, as is his influence in the history of the novel, in which he was a pioneer of psychological realism and formal architectonics, and the master of a rich, highly complex prose style and an extremely apprehension of values of character. ◆ Major Subjects James Stressed three subjects that are now regarded as influential in modern fiction. 1) Children: James wrote about children as children, not as small adult. He examined their minds, their psychology and accepted it as valid. 2) New Woman: He treated the new woman in America in the latter half of the 19th century as a representative of culture and refinement. (beauty, culture and refinement, not as sexual objects, never married, reticent from sexual passions.) 3) Artist: The author examined the artist to find out how the artist thinks about his audience, what problems the artist has in deciding what to write about, and how to writer, or how to paint, and what to paint. ◆ Theory of Fiction James worked out his influential principles of fiction in The Art of Fiction (1884) and contributed very much to the literary critical idiom. 1) The novelist must be faithful to life as it actually appears. “The air of reality seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel.” 2) There must be freedom for the artist to choose what subject he will deal with. The judgment of art is an aesthetic function, not an ethical one. 3) The novel must be regarded as an organic whole with every part a functioning contributor to the achieving of the novels’ ultimate expression. 4) Dramatization: showing rather than telling. Rather than summarizing an event, the writers take the reader to the event as if the reader were watching it in a movie or watching it on stage. 5) Central consciousness through whom events are observed. To take the mind of a person who is there and knows only what is in his mind, so he can only report what he sees, and how he feels. (not the omniscient third person) 6) Psychological realism: James has been called the first of the “modern psychological novelist,” and “a realist of the inner life.” It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations. Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a master piece of psychological realism. And Henry James is considered the founder of psychological realism. He believed that reality lies in the impressions made by life on the spectator, and not in any facts of which the spectator is unaware. Such realism is therefore merely the obligation that the artist assumes to represent life as he sees it, which may not be the same as it “really” is. 7) Ambiguity: James never let anything react as certain. People can not be sure what the real thing is. So the question of ambiguity and complete truthfulness is very important, and this is what makes James’s fiction so subtle. ◆ Literary Appreciation The Portrait of a LadyØ Mrs. Touchett, estranged wife of an expatriated American banker, brings to England her penniless niece, Isabel Archer, in her early twenties, intelligent and beautiful, who immediately attracts old Mr. Touchett, his invalid son Ralph, and their wealthy neighbor, Lord Warburton. Ø The nobleman proposes marriage, but Isabel refuses him, and her courage and independence win the admiration of the Touchetts. Ø Casper Goodwood, a sincere, persistent suitor, comes from America to renew his proposal, but Isabel tells him that her personal independence is her most valued possession and that she must have two years before giving him her answer. Ø Ralph is also in love with her, but realizes that hey cannot marry and arranges for her financial security by persuading his father to make her his heir. Ø At the old man’s death, Isabel becomes wealthy and goes to Florence with Mrs. Touchett. Ø There Madame Merle, a gracious expatriate, introduces her to Gilbert Osmond, an American dilettante and widower. Ø Incapable of perceiving that he desires her fortune, Isabel is won by Osmond’s taste and intellectual detachment, despite the protests of Casper and her other friends. Ø During the following years, she becomes aware of her husband’s shallow aestheticism and lack of moral depth, but decides against a separation because of her pride, determination to fulfill her obligations, and sympathy for Pansy, Osmond’s frail young daughter. Ø Warburton, who still loves her, becomes a constant visitor and seeks to marry Pansy. Ø Madame Merle is active in this new match making, and she and Osmond urge Isabel to use her influence with Warburton, but she withdraws when Pansy shows that she does not desire the marriage. Ø This widens the breach between Isabel and her husband, who accuses her of an affair with Warburton. Ø Summoned to England, where Ralph is dying, Isabel feels that she may never return to Italy, especially when she learns that Pansy’s mother is Madame Merle. Ø After comforting Ralph on his deathbed, she is joined by Casper, for whom she finally admits her affection. Ø Conscience and her duty to Pansy dominate her desires, however, and she dismisses Casper and returns to her unhappy home. ◆ Homework [Thinking] What are the differences between Howells and James? Howells and James both worked for realism, but there are obvious differences between the two. Howells mainly dealt with the middle class life whereas James dealt with the upper social life. Howells wrote in the tradition of general realism whereas James wrote in psychological realism. Reference Books: q Chang Yaoxin: A Survey of American Literature, the 2nd edition. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 2003.12 q Liu Cunbo: Selected Readings in British and American Literature, Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2001 q 陈新选著：《英美名家短篇小说精品赏析》，北京：中国对外翻译出版公司， q 李翠葶，李正栓：《美国文学学习指南》，北京：清华大学出版社，2002 q 万 莉，陈范霞：《英美文学选读》，北京：光明日报社，2001 q 吴定柏：《美国文学大纲》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，1998
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