The Loss of Innocence

The Loss of Innocence pp. 472 - 482

1850 – 1914

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman introduces FREE VERSE in American poetry! Yippee! Now poets reject restricting rhyme schemes and meter and write in a free- flowing, non-rhyming style! How liberating!!

Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species and shocks the world!! However, social Darwinism will shape how people view the different social classes. Do the poor deserve their poverty? If they were meant to compete and survive in nature, wouldn’t they adapt and abolish their own poverty? If you rise to the top, doesn’t that prove you are deserving of all your riches and success?

Mark Twain – the first international Realist! What is “realism”? Twain and his contemporaries thought literature should show a “snap shot” of real life and deal with ordinary men living ordinary lives. Their short stories and novels showed the gritty, ugly, but REAL conditions of humanity. Realism lacked the idealism of the Romantics and Transcendentalists. Wouldn’t you become a bit disillusioned if you lived through a war that nearly ripped the country apart and resulted in massive casualties and a destroyed South?

Regionalism and Realism – These authors wrote in dialect, or in the actual language from different regions. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain writes in SEVEN very distinct American dialects!!

Westward expansion and gold! Electricity! Telephones! Photography!

By the late 1800s, America begins its period of most rapid industrial growth! Trains, planes and automobiles!!

Some of the negative aspects – Massive efforts to remove Native Americans, divide of the nation and the slow healing process, exploitation of European immigrants, subjection of women… What Mark Twain referred to as The Gilded Age.

Another group of writers – the Naturalists – wrote realistically but also portrayed man as nothing more than another species struggling for survival. “Survival of the fittest!” Nature is not the spiritual guide, refuge and healer, but instead, the cold, unfeeling, distant force that cares nothing for man’s survival.

The Civil War and Its Aftermath 1845 – 1880

 Industrial North vs. Agrarian South – South had a long military service history; better leaders. How many industrial inventions can you identify?  Emancipation Proclamation - end of the slave economy  Three Major Issues – 1) Reconstruction; 2) Women’s equality; 3) Western expansion and the relocation of Native Americans

Some important dates …  1845 – Great Famine in Ireland results in increased immigration  1845 – New York Knickerbockers, first American baseball team  1846 – War between US and Mexico  1848 – Great Gold Rush!  1848 – First women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY  1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin appears in book form  1855 – Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published  1859 – John Brown leads antislavery raid, Harpers Ferry, VA  1863 – Gettysburg Address  1865 – End of Civil War; assassination of Abraham Lincoln; 13th Amendment  1867 – Seward’s Folly  1869 – Suez Canal opens  1870s – Levi Strauss makes rugged pants out of blue denim  1876 – Battle of Little Bighorn

Literary History – What do you remember? Puritan (plain style) Writings: 1600s – 1750s Genre: Topics:

Who were the puritan author’s?

Romanticism and A New Nation: 1750s – 1845 Characteristics:

Transcendentalism:

Who wrote in this tradition?

Gothic Romanticism:

Who wrote in this tradition? American Realism and Naturalism: Realism: 1. Realistic (objective) portrayal of human events 2. economic conditions and conflicts between social classes 3. rely on “local color” and dialect 4. Themes support democratic principles and pragmatism (realist DO believe humans have a certain degree of free will they can use to affect their situations American Realists Mark Twain, Elizabeth Wharton, Bret Harte

Naturalism: 1. Similar to realism but authors believe humans are at the mercy of biological and socioeconomical forces; therefore, they have little to no free will and are helpless to affect their situation.

American Naturalists: Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Jack London, Frank Norris