HH Test on Realism, Naturalism and Regionalism

Realism

sought to portray life as faithfully and accurately as possible, focusing on ordinary people suffering the harsh realities of everyday life

Naturalism

also sought to portray ordinary people’s lives, but suggested that environment, heredity, and chance, or forces they could neither understand nor control, determined fate

Elements of Naturalism

• Came from Realistic movement and depicts life truthfully and accurately

• Determinism—suggests persons fate is determined by heredity, change and elements of the environment

• despite being powerless, characters conduct themselves with strength and dignity in the face of adversity (death with dignity)

• Detached 3rd person narrator (often no name given to characters)

• “Brute within” is the notion that everyone has strong ad often warring emotions, passons such as lust greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure, leading to behavior considered taboo by society 

• Characters encounter the indifferent universe can cause this brute to rise up, often in violent ways 

• Themes of violence, poverty, and corruption 

Difference between Naturalism and Realism

In naturalism, the things happen to the characters are out of their control

Regionalism

literary movement in which writers attempt to depict and analyze the distinctive and unique qualities of a geographical area and its people

Local Color

aspect of regionalism that highlights characteristics and details unique to a specific area

• Captures physical environment, mood of time and place, and ways people talk (vernacular) and think

• Example from “Outcasts of Poker Flat”: red dust, neat boots, precipitous cliffs of naked granite overlooking the valley

Direct characterization

when the author described traits of a character through stating it directly

Indirect characterization

a characters traits are revealed through their actions, speech, thoughts, and reactions rather than being directly states by the author

Verbal irony

use of words to suggest opposite meaning

Situational irony

when the opposite of what was expected happens

Dramatic irony

when the readers know something the characters do not