Course details

Name: ENGL - 336

Title: AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM

Section: 01

Semester: Spring - 2011

Credits: 3

Description:
As the U.S. industrialized in the latter third of the nineteenth century, writers and other artists, in a rather dramatic way, abandoned genteel and romantic aesthetic traditions in favor of "realism" and a "mania for facts." This course will explore how, why and under what historical and social circumstances realism and naturalism emerged as a dominant aesthetic in this era. Novelists tried to "tell the truth" about a tumultuous era marked by class and race turbulence, the changing roles of women in the home and workplace, and the increasing concentration of wealth within the ruling elite. In this view, artistic honesty meant a direct confrontation with life, with the social dimension of experience. Also, the writers made a case for widening the range of characters and settings and for appealing to a mass audience. In short, as writers committed literature to an exploration of ordinary life, they also waged a relentless attack on aesthetic \\\"idealism\\\". The aftermath of the great depression of 1893 made clear that violent class and race antagonisms had become a permanent part of American life under industrial capitalism. Novels will be selected from the work of major writers of this period (1890-1920) --such as Chestnutt, Chopin, Crane, Dreiser, Howells, James, Jewett, London, Norris, and Sinclair.

Schedule:

Graduation requirements:

• ()
• Genre Study (Fiction)
• ()
• ()
• Pre-1900 American (TE 1c)

Teaching Faculty: ()

Is course canceled: No