Study guide
Study guide ENGL 3215
Pgs 3-19
Realism refers to a movement in English, European, and American literature that gathered force from the 1830s to the end of the century. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.
Naturalism can be thought of as a version of realism, or as an alternative to it. Literary naturalists, unlike the realists for whom human beings defined themselves within recognizable settings, wrote about human life as it was shaped by forces beyond human control. More extreme and arguably more romantic, view of human life than realism.
Regional writing expression of the realist impulse, resulted from the desire both to preserve a record distinctive ways of life and to come to terms with the new world that seemed to be replacing these early and allegedly happier times.
Walt Whitman - Birds rejected traditions of poetic scansion and elevated diction, improvising that form that has come to be known as free verse
Wrote “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, “When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry - This poem seeks to determine the relationship of human beings to one another across time and space. Whitman wonders what he means (not as a poet but as another anonymous individual) to the crowds of strangers he sees every day. He assumes that they see the same things he does, and that they react in the same way, and that this brings them together in a very real sense. In his description of the New York waterfront Whitman does not differentiate between the natural and the man-made. Steamships and buildings are described in the same terms as seagulls and waves. This seems to be Whitman’s nod to historical specificity, which can disrupt continuity of experience. Fifty years before Whitman’s ferry crossing, the steamships and the skyline were not there, and he knows this. It is these minor changes that enable him to be specific, and that allow perspective on human
Pgs 3-19
Realism refers to a movement in English, European, and American literature that gathered force from the 1830s to the end of the century. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.
Naturalism can be thought of as a version of realism, or as an alternative to it. Literary naturalists, unlike the realists for whom human beings defined themselves within recognizable settings, wrote about human life as it was shaped by forces beyond human control. More extreme and arguably more romantic, view of human life than realism.
Regional writing expression of the realist impulse, resulted from the desire both to preserve a record distinctive ways of life and to come to terms with the new world that seemed to be replacing these early and allegedly happier times.
Walt Whitman - Birds rejected traditions of poetic scansion and elevated diction, improvising that form that has come to be known as free verse
Wrote “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”, “When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry - This poem seeks to determine the relationship of human beings to one another across time and space. Whitman wonders what he means (not as a poet but as another anonymous individual) to the crowds of strangers he sees every day. He assumes that they see the same things he does, and that they react in the same way, and that this brings them together in a very real sense. In his description of the New York waterfront Whitman does not differentiate between the natural and the man-made. Steamships and buildings are described in the same terms as seagulls and waves. This seems to be Whitman’s nod to historical specificity, which can disrupt continuity of experience. Fifty years before Whitman’s ferry crossing, the steamships and the skyline were not there, and he knows this. It is these minor changes that enable him to be specific, and that allow perspective on human