I．Definition of American Realism “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists enter their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence” (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature,p428 Realism is based on the accurate, unromanticized observation of human experiences. It insists on everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner on precise description, authentic action and dialogue, moral honesty and a democratic openness in subject matter and style. As a literary movement, realism refers to the approach of realist fiction occurred at the latter part of the 19th century. Realistic writers examine things in much detail, question the scene they’re talking about, question what they’re seeing, have critical sense, are truthful to life. Realism: try to educate people, to warn people, to be moral teachers, to benefit the society he criticizes so much, to deal with morality, to be more critical Characteristics of Writings (1) Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday senses are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. (2) In realist fiction characters from all social levels are examined in depth. (3) Open ending is also a good example of the truthful treatment of material. (4) Realism focuses on commonness of the lives of the common people who are customarily ignored by the arts. (5) Realism emphasizes objectivity and offers an objective rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience. (6) Romanticism presents moral visions II. The reasons on the rise of American Realism ※ more educated people; ※ the development of industry; ※ growth of population in city / urban; ※ immigration: people move from the north to the south, from the east to the west; ※ the Gilded Age: more and more people become rich, pleasure-seeking, self-contained . Political reason： • the result of the American Civil War (1861--1865) : • The victory of the North, to protect the integrity of the United States as an indivisible nation; • Congress tried to press forward with its program of “Reconstruction”, or reform of the southern states; • Slavery was abolished, however, the southern states passed laws to segregate whites and blacks in public places; To the end of the 19th century, the system of segregation grew more rigid; most southern blacks were still living a miserable life Economic Development： • Northern industrialism had triumphed over Southern agrarianism农业的, and from that victory came a society based on mass labor and mass consumption. • In the first decades after the Civil War, Americans ceased to be isolated from the world and from each other. • Telegraph lines spanned the nation, and in 1866 a trans-Atlantic cable joined America and Europe. • The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. • the end of the Civil War--- the beginning of World War I , a time of steel and steam, electricity and oil. • The tallow candles and whale-oil lamps of rural America were replaced by lanterns filled with kerosene made from crude oil. The American petroleum industry began, and with it came the age of the automobile. III. Literary Characteristics of the Age： 1.women became the nation‘s dominant culture force • In the latter half of the nineteenth century, women became the nation's dominant culture force, a position they have never relinquished. Ladies' journalism began to flourish. • The greatest woman writer of the age, Emily Dickinson, was almost completely unknown; her first collection of poetry was not published until 1890, four years after her death. But Hariet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), had become an American institution and the most famous literary woman in the world. 2. New England Renaissance had waned • By the 1870s the New England Renaissance had waned衰落. • Hawthorne and Thoreau were dead; Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier had passed their literary zeniths顶点； • Melville, living in obscurity, had ceased to publish his fiction. • Only Whitman continued to offer a new literary vision to the world, issuing a fifth edition of Leaves of Grass in 1870 and publishing Democratic Vistas in 1871. 3. A host of new writers appeared • Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland, and Mark Twain； • Their background and training were middle-class and journalistic rather than genteel or academic. Influenced by such Europeans as Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, America’s most note-worthy new authors established a literature of realism. • Realists sought to portray American life as it really was, insisting that the ordinary and the local were as suitable for artistic portrayal as the magnificent and the remote. IV. The schools of American Realism • ※ Frontier Humor • ※ Midwestern realism • ※ Cosmopolitan Novelist • ※ Regionalism (local color) • ※ Naturalism • ※ The Chicago School of poets • ※ The rise of black American literature 1. Frontier Humor  It is the vital and exuberant literature that was generated by the westward expansion of the United States in the late 18th and the 19th centuries.