AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM AND NATURALISM

Catalog description

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century two major literary genres - Realism and Naturalism - emerged in the United States not only to challenge the primacy of Romanticism and its generally optimistic view of life but also to actively engage with the modern America created after the Civil War. This course examines a wide range of realist and naturalist works, written between 1865 and 1914, by an extremely diverse group of male and female authors from different races, ethnicities, regions, religions, and socioeconomic classes. Emphasis will be placed on how various cultural, economic, political, and social factors influenced the construction and reception of these works. (Cross-listed with ENGL 8146 ).