Realism and Modernism

Realism is the author trying to depict real life as it actually existed (Werlock). It was in a kind of booming time of America. The country itself was expanding, getting more states, more land in the Pacific, bigger economy, more production, new industries. Things that we recognize today were all beginning basically in this time period. So realists tried to look at what actually happened. If there was a close person to the author that was depressed and the author choose to wrote about this person, the author would not cut anything out in that chosen person's life. He would talk about the person's feelings, the things they are thinking maybe, the physical things they may be doing to themselves. But anyway, they would not leave anything out and they would try to create a picture of that person. There was something I came across earlier in my realism reading, and that was that a realist is a photographer and they cannot choose the details in their photograph. Whatever is in the photograph was in it. Then there was a painter who was a naturalist and was able to choose what he wanted in the picture. That was the difference between the two. Some authors that were realists were people like Mark Twain who was very descriptive, Edgar Lee Masters, and Sojourner Truth. This movement was from the late 1850's to the early 1900's.

Modernism is kind of a revolution of realism. Modernists were from about World War I to the end of World War II. Modernism and Realism are obviously in different time periods, sure it may not be a big difference with fifteen years between the end of realism and the start of modernism, but there is a massive difference between the two. In the modernist period, women now had the right to vote, African Americans were not seen as the evil they once seemed, and America evolved into an isolationist country instead of an expansionist one. These are just some of the few differences between the two time periods. The modernists focused on what the American Dream had turned into. Modernists did not like what the American Dream had turned into so they started to make changes within their writing, art, music, and even the clothing they wore. One thing that evolved was the flappers. They wore much less clothing than women in previous generations. They kind of tested the boundaries so to say. Then there was the Harlem Renaissance. This Renaissance was a modernist movement that dealt with human emotion. This was different than realism in that it was feelings, and not just life as it existed. The members of the movement tried pushing racial integration and progressive politics and this could be seen from a modernist poet like Ezra Pound. With modernism there also came the new style of music, jazz. It was started in the south and it was a completely new form of music. It was a very emotion form of music, and could be played in a large variety of ways. This is also where a new form of art came about. Common were things like Plamer Hayden's watercolor and oil paintings.




Anderson, George Parker. "modernism." In Anderson, George P., Judith S. Baughman, Matthew J. Bruccoli, and Carl Rollyson, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition: Into the Modern: 1896–1945, Volume 3. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. April 6, 2011.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. April 6, 2011.