Essays on Literary Realism

Rebecca Harding Davis, an American writer who anticipated the phenomenon of American literary realism by over two decades, was undeservingly forgotten for almost eighty years after her death (Larson). Only in the early 1970’s the name of Rebecca Davis was rescued from oblivion by the feminist American writer Tillie Olsen who found some of her coverless works in an Omaha junkshop (Lasseter). Rebecca Harding Davis was born in June 24, 1831 in Alabama but then her family moved to Virginia and settled in Wheeling where Rebecca spent all her childhood and left the town only when she got ...

Introduction

Realism is a unique philosophical belief that suggests that a person’s reality (which can be characterized by his perception of life, including the things a person has and the experiences he has encountered), or a certain aspect of such reality is dependent on subjective factors and is ontologically independent from standard conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, perceptions, and other established system . Realism is generally the view that entities, which in this are humans, have an objective reality, a reality that is completely and ontologically independent of those entities’ conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, and etc. Thus, entities including abstract concepts and universals as ...

(Student’s Full Name)

“A man said to the universe: ‘Sir, I exist!’ ‘However,’ replied the universe, ‘The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.’”—Stephen Crane The above quote made by Stephen Crane highlights the personal philosophy which Crane had concerning nature or “the universe,” which may appear at have a certain detachment concerning its relationship with humans. This point is further emphasized by Harold Bloom's introduction in the critical work entitled, Stephen Crane in the following: “[Stephen Crane's] mode wasrenderedwith a meticulous nihilism, a deep sense of the meaninglessness of life except for what could be converted ...

"There Was Crimson Clash of War" by Stephen Crane The poem talks about the consequences of the mental and physical violence that is associated with war. This is because Crane’s background was involved in fascination of war; hence he spread the inspiring messages through this poem. In this poem the speaker is an outsider who is trying to review a situation that he cannot understand. “There came one who understood not these things”, (line 5), portrays a situation where a stranger who can not understand the situation developed by war. When the stranger tries to get the meaning by ...

The idea of postmodernism in literature is one of the most predominant notions existing in criticism today; though its definitions are often loose and unmoored, there are many specific notions about its application to a great many aspects of modern society, from its books and its written works to culture itself. Fredric Jameson, in his essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," he denotes the ambiguity that permeates all manner of consumer culture and literature in today's age; pastiche and schizophrenia are touted as the means by which postmodernism translates to the modern day culture. N. Katherine Hayles, on the other hand, ...

In this day and age, humanity is rubbed raw of cynicism. The information age is taking our world to greater heights and banishes all mysteries left in the world—and in such haste. In the mad rat race, people have grown weary and look at our reality as a dull brick wall devoid of any meaning and wonder. Once upon a time, the horizon promised exotic islands, unseen civilizations, treasures waiting to be unearthed. The only place where these seem to exist are places of fiction and fantasy. So where does a writer of literary realism such as John Updike belong, if ...