Remember when you were a kid and had a crush on a really hot cartoon character? Then you got older and had a crush on a movie star? Then you got older, had a crush on your best friend's girl friend, stole her, married her, and had three kids? That's kind of how realism in literature developed.
The day was August 14, 2005. I borrowed a book from my 12 year old nephew. It had a dragon on the cover. I had officially become a complete dork.
My life was spinning out of control. I had spent my life ridiculing the Star Trek Convention, fantasy literature, and King Arthur's knights with my football teammates at lumberjack camps. Now, I was reading books with dragons on the front. It was time for a change. I needed to return to realism in literature.
I spent the next few weeks reading George Eliot, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Jack London, and Henrik Ibsen.
Definition of Realism in Literature
A break from Romanticism, Realism is any effort to portray life as it truly is. In the middle of the 19th century, kings and queens, warriors and knights, demonic cats, ghosts, sea creatures, and monsters gave way to farmers, merchants, lawyers, laborers, and bakers. Realism in literature was part of a wider movement in the arts to focus on ordinary people and events
The following Realism writers find themselves oft anthologized in high school and middle school texts:
• Ambrose Bierce
• Kate Chopin
• Stephen Crane
• Theodore Dreiser
• W.E.B. Dubois
• Mary Wilkins Freeman
• Hamlin Garland
• Henry James
• Jack London
• Mark Twain
• Charles Dickens
• Emily Bronte
• George Eliot
• Oscar Wilde
• John Steinbeck
Characteristics of Realistic Fiction
Share the following characteristics of Realistic Fiction to enhance literary knowledge:
1. Realists take their subject matter from ordinary life. Realists were influenced by the spread of democracy in Europe and North America. Middle and lower class citizens were becoming increasingly important. Detailed settings