Berthoff Warner has spent over two decades as a professor and is one of the leading authorities on Melville, realism, and other literary topics. His book, “The Ferment of Realism: American Literature 1884-1919” introduces readers to the foundations of realism as both a literary and artistic movement by tracing first the landscape of American literature before realism and looking at the changes that began to take place that would later create realism, specifically a form of realism that was distinctly American.

By integrating a number of other critics writing about examples of realism in American literature, he assesses several authors including Twain, Henry James, and William Dean Howells and discusses how they still had some of the characteristics of older romanticism. He then broadens his discussion by looking more closely at works by Stephen Crane and similar authors such as Theodore Dreiser. In this book he does not appear to consider realism as something that developed spontaneously, but rather examines the way the preceding literature impacted its eventual development. He cited particular influences such as new forms of journalism as well as consumer culture.

What is perhaps most intriguing about the book by Berthoff Warner that discusses examples of realism in American literature, “The Ferment of Realism: American Literature 1884-1919“, however, is that it does not attempt to attribute the emergence of realism to anything other than a natural process or progression of society and art. In other words, whereas a scholar such as Knoper suggests that realism developed out of advances in sciences and understandings of brain functions, Warner suggests that realism developed as a political or aesthetic reaction to romanticism (or idealism) which no longer had any function in a quickly industrializing and sometimes dehumanizing society.

For instance, to highlight his ideas about realism in American literature through examples, at one point Warner states, “In the 1880s, the standard of realism was being raised in good part simply out of professional distaste for a polite literature that was rotten ripe with idealizing sentiment and genteel affectation. Life, even at its most ordinary was simply more interesting than that” (Warner 1981: 15). In other words, idealism had become something useless and was being replaced, almost out of a sense of utility, by forms that were more like journalism than fiction. While the book does lack an adequate description for why this occurred (in terms of the underlying psychology of America in the 1880s beyond mere events and critical assumptions) it is clear that the reader is not supposed to assume that there was a singular reason for the emergence of literary realism. It was simply time for a change because the increasingly complex world of consumer culture in America demanded something that was based in the real and everyday, not in lofty fantasies that had no chance of being fulfilled.

Throughout the most recent critical approaches, especially in books devoted to realism, the main cause for realism was that there was a need for a reaction against romanticism. Such thoughts are backed up by the realism scholar Pizer in his essays and other works and although they do not offer readers a radical new way of thinking about realism, he does offer several succinct definitions of realism and its sub-type naturalism. Donald Pizer is a Professor of English at Tulane University and is the author of several critical books and journal articles pertaining to the realism among other literary topics. He is one of the founders of the International Theodore Dreiser Society (a society dedicated to one of the premier authors of the early realism movement) and continues to teach. Because of his experience with realism texts and his critical approach, he was asked to be the editor to the Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism, a text that is widely used in college classrooms. As the editor, he compiled several critical essays on realism and offered his own insights to the period which are, rather predictably, quite conventional.

Throughout his article, Pizer asserts that realism spawned as a reaction against the values expressed in romantic literature and attempted instead to show the world in a more genuine light. As he states in his text, “Though naturalism [and realism] could have arisen only after absorbing the insights of realism, it insisted on subjects, attitudes, and techniques that bewildered and often offended its forerunners…Still, like realists, the naturalists saw sentimental and adventurous fantasy as the main source of miasma” (Pizer 1995: 21). Like many other critics, Pizer is suggesting that realism started as a reaction and then, it’s “child” which was naturalism then sought to carry through some of the tenants of realism. In addition to this, he admits that both realism and later naturalism were founded because of a necessary reaction against the prevailing idealism in romantic works and thus he is clearly putting forward a very commonly accepted idea about realism although in much clearer terms.

With all of these perceptions of realist literature in America and different interpretations of it, it is useful to close by taking a look at the thoughts Edmundo Paz Soldan. Dr. Soldan is a short story writer and the winner of the Bolivian National Book Award in 2003. In addition to his fictional pursuits, he has a PhD in Latin American literature and is an assistant professor of Hispanic Literature at Cornell University. While he mainly concentrates on fiction, most of from a magical realism point of view, in his essay entitled, “Between Tradition and Innovation” he examines realism and what it means today. He points out that it is a form that has remained with us for some time and continues evolving, although without the threat of disappearing. He reminds readers that “our literary trends nowadays have different names, all of which, as is often the case, are somewhat inaccurate. Virtual realism is one such name. Dirty realism and postmodern costumbrismo is yet another label applied. Is this a new realism?” (Soldan 2004: 16). Although his article concentrates mostly on the turn Latin American literature has taken away from aspects of magical realism, he incorporates some of the same questions about the function of the novel, especially the realist novel, in terms of today’s society.

Just as was the case when Howells and other realist writers were being criticized by their peers at the advent of realism in America, the same questions about what literature should mean perpetuate today. He considers the complexity of world events in this literary period and wonders how much literature should reflect these problems and anxieties just as those critics in the nineteenth century wondered the same thing. His final assessment is that realism persists and reemerges in different forms with different names, although the final product is still in some way based on the predecessors of more modern realism. In general, this is an excellent article to consider after taking a look at the thoughts of other critics and it appears that Soldan’s assessment is correct; that novelists are still modifying realism while critics still contemplate the same questions about the validity of representing the world realistically instead of fantastically or idealistically. In sum, from past to present, realism poses the same questions to readers as well as critics and it is clear that it must have some sway over both because of its continuation throughout the past century and into this new one.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Overview of Romanticism in Literature  •   An Overview and Extended Definition of Formalism in Literature and Theory   •    American Literature in Historical Context : 1865 to Roosevelt  •  Class and Satire in “The American” by Henry James and “Huck Finn” by Mark Twain •  “Turn of the Screw” by Henry James as a Psychological Thriller?

Sources

Knoper, R. (2002). American Literary Realism and Nervous ‘Reflexion’. American Literature, 74(4), 715.

Link, E. C. (1997). The War of 1893; or, realism and idealism in the late nineteenth century. ATQ: Jounral of American 19thCentury Literature and Culture, 11(4), 309.

Pizer, Donald (Ed). (1995). The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Soldán, E. P. (2004). Between Tradition and Innovation. World Literature Today, 78(3/4), 16.

Warner, Berthoff. (1981).The Ferment of Realism: American Literature 1884-1919. New York: Cambridge University Press.