Transcript Variations and Departures 1870-1915

Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Authors:
•Walt Whitman
•Emily Dickinson
•Mark Twain
•Ambrose Bierce
var·i·a·tion
(vâr'ē-ā'shən, vār'-) :
Marked difference or deviation
from the normal or recognized
form, function, or structure.
de·par·ture
(di-'pär-ch&r):
divergence or deviation, as
from a standard, rule, etc.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
What’s going on?
The North has won the civil war, the slaves are
freed, the South is impoverished, and the
president was assassinated.
Things are not going so well.
Mark Twain wrote:
“The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions
that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people,
transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so
profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence
cannot be measured.”
In other words, the civil war left America a
changed nation.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Between 1870 and 1915 America did experience
explosive growth.
Symbolic of this growth was the development of
the railroad.
The 35,000 miles of track in 1965 had
increased to about 200,000 miles by the
end of the century.
In 1869 the Union Pacific Railroad
which, in effect, linked America
from the Atlantic to the Pacific
ocean, was completed.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
In his writing “Passage to India,” Walt Whitman called
for a spiritual achievement to parallel the amazing
engineering achievements of the age—and he had
good reason!
This period was a time of plunder
and exploitation, of greedy
materialism and political
corruption, of financial piracy and
labor strife.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Great fortunes were
accumulated while
some people went
hungry in the growing
cities.
Immigrants from Europe poured
into the United States in search of
fortune, but most found themselves
laboring on railroads or in
sweatshop factories for low wages.
Magazine and book publishing flourished with the
growth of a prosperous, literate middle class, who
thirsted for practical information and for fiction
representing “real life.”
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Why is this time period called
“Variations and Departures?”
Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and
Emily Dickinson departed from
previous themes, contents, forms,
and use of language
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Three Literary GIANTS!
•Walt Whitman
•Emily Dickinson
•Mark Twain
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Walt Whitman:
--Self-proclaimed “poet
of America”
--invented free verse
--used bold images and
symbols taken from
everyday life
--tried to capture the truth of the
American experience
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Emily Dickinson:
--discovered ideas for her poetry from
the garden next to her house
--also found ideas in the
small events of her
household work
--used slant rhymes and
bizarre word patterns
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Mark Twain:
--Set his stories along the
Mississippi River and used
things from daily life in
his stories
--brought humor to the novel
that was not embraced
before
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Each in his or her own way brought the
American language of farms and streets,
steamboatmen and Westerners, into novels,
poems, and essays that Americans would
read. The language was simple and direct,
sometimes slangy, and different than the
“literary” and British language that previous
American writers had used.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Realism
Realism is a type of writing during this era
where authors tried to re-create everyday
reality to help the readers “experience”
real life.
These authors believed the truth of
experience was to be found in events
described accurately and objectively,
undistorted by the writer’s imagination.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
One part of realism was the use of something
called “local color.”
Local color: Authors would set their
writing in a specific region and incorporate
local speech, customs, setting, regional
character, temperament, and dress into their
writing.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Naturalism
The new theories of Darwin, Freud, and Marx
were suggesting that biology, psychology, and
economics determine each individual’s destiny.
Naturalistic writers took these ideas and
applied them to their presentation or
interpretation of the human experience.
Variations and Departures
1870-1915
Writers like Ambrose Bierce and
Stephen Crane tended to depict
life as grim, the universe as cold
and spiritless, and the individual
as a victim of heredity, society,
and natural forces.
Naturalism was pretty much the opposite of
Romanticism and Transcendentalism.
All information is taken from “The United States in Literature,” pages 291-293