美国文学课件五.ppt

Realism (1860~1890) I Realism II Features of Realism III American Realism IV Representatives Term in Brief Broadly defined as “the faithful representation of reality” or “verisimilitude,” (逼真) realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. Definition: Realism Realism: a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or “reflecting” faithfully an actual way of life. In addition, in literature, the tendency to emphasize the limitations that real life imposes on humanity, and to show how those limitations affect life. Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism The romance is said to present life as we would have it be— more picturesque, fantastic, adventurous, or heroic than actuality; realism, on the other hand, is said to represent life as it really is. Realistic fiction is often opposed to romantic fiction. Naturalism is a metaphysical theory that holds that all phenomena can be explained mechanistically in terms of natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes and laws. Naturalism posits that the universe is a vast machine or organism, devoid of general purpose and indifferent to human needs and desires. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.” Realism in American Literature In American literature, the term realism encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the 20th century during which William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various con