Realism And Mary Gaitskill's Six Motives For Creative Writing

Romanticism and realism are two very different styles of writings. They both came about in the 19th century. Writing through romanticism is a way to express your emotions in a deeper way, but writing through realism is a way to express your true feelings about how the world is. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick he uses romanticism to express his point. In The War Prayer by Mark Twain, the speaker talks about the real aspects of war.

Realism was a direct result of the social and economic changes of the 19th century in Europe. It originated in France in the after the Revolutions of 1848, which were a series of political outbreaks throughout Europe. It was around 1906, when Jonas Lie discovered the beauty of impressionism in Claude Monet’s paintings when he went on a trip to Paris while visiting Norway to reconnect with the Norwegian side of his family. He was fascinated by Monet’s use of color and light and incorporated that style in his later works. Lie’s artistic talent in mixing the two art styles is evident, as seen in his painting Dusk on Lower Broadway. (See fig 1.) The brushstrokes look like they were made quickly but with precision, creating a piece of art that looks realistic from far

It all starts here….. Rational and well-reasoned ideas were embraced by writers and philosophers from the age of reason. In an orderly manner, these ideas could essentially help to define the world. Writers in this time period were more focused on traditional writing styles and using formal language. Romantics were rebelling against “constrained thinking,” and they celebrated emotion, creativity, and the mystery of nature. New forms of writing were explored by the romantics. Often writing about nature and everyday experiences of men and women, it eventually gave way to realism and romanticism stretched from the 1700’s to the 1800’s.

They both started in Europe and spread out in U.S; both were influenced by the events of the everyday life; both used nature as their muse; both focused their work on representation of the lower class, humble people, ordinary events, injustice done to the society .Since life started to change with the industrialization people started to shift from Romanticism toward Realism. As the fact has it, in times when there is poverty, not enough food, struggle and pain , society withdraws from the spirituality, emotions and dreams and focuses more on the everyday life and tries to get by as each day passes. That is what happened with Romanticism and Realism. The larger-than-life hero and events were left behind as the real and contemporary art (Realism) started to outgrow Romanticism. Both arts are unique in their elements of representation but the same on their core. Romanticism embodied sense, emotions, spirituality, interest on the folk culture, supernatural events and the hero figure; focused on passion and inner struggles and creative spirit; interested on mysterious and embracing the grandeur of nature instead of the God. Realism instead embodied the opposite elements, ordinary characters and real life events, describing lower class and every day struggles, social issues; the language used is simple and nothing literary as it is in Romanticism.

Romanticism was an art movement that developed in the late eighteenth century and lasted for about one hundred years. Romanticism is a rejection of the traditional values of reason, order, and objectivity that characterized Classicism and Enlightenment, in particular Neoclassicism. For the romantic artist, Neoclassical principles hindered the artist’s vision and creativity. Rather, the romantic artist emphasized and valued intuition, juxtaposing emotions, and imagination. Generally, Britain and Germany were seen at the forefront of romanticism. The British Industrial Revolution initiated a disillusionment in rationalism and materialism, consequently rejecting classicism.

Realism is the artistic attempt to recreate life as it is in the context of an artistic medium. It began as a revolt against the conventions of the classic view of art in the late 1800s in America and Europe in the form of an artistic movement (McConnel, R. 1997). There are many themes involved with realism that shall be discussed. These include accuracy and independence.

Just as I mentioned first in the previous reading response, both Romanticism and Realistism responded to the enlightenent in a good way. These artists did not affirm or critique the ideas projected by the enlightenment instead they modified those believes and used them to their advantages. I personally admired the realistic artistics that where either criticize or monked for painting an artwork as they saw it through their days. One of the realistic painter known as Gustave Courbet said, “I have never seen an angle. Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one”. This means that he never painted anything that he or others did not see or had an experience with.1111111111111111111111111

My definition of romanticism is when nature played a huge part to all the great artists and writers of the time. The Period of romanticism took place during the 1800s when individuals put emotion into their work and cared about education, literature, and natural history. The true romantics wanted to escape the industrial age and move away from urbanization and population in general. The romantic revolution paved the way for many writers and artists because people felt free and it gave inspiration for original ideas. Some of the great novelists surfaced during the Romanic age, one of which was marry shelly who wrote Frankenstein a masterpiece during its time.

Realism, in contrast to Romanticism, represents the reality of life in America. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America experienced enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural change. Realism focuses on showing everyday activities and events among the middle and lower class society without romantic ideas. In the early 20th century people started to pull away from fantasy and started focusing on the reality around them. Realism emphasises on truth, class, and social commentary.

American Realism was a style of art in the 19th and 20th century. It overviewed art, music, poetry, etc. It was a tyle of being totally realistic due to many things are able to happen to everyday people. Some of the most important people in american realism was Ralph Waldo Emerson that viewed the prospects of love and life. Also Henry.J, William D.H , Mark T were realists that showed the overview or the life of a daily basis. Naturalists are people that practice the natural aspects in life and in nature.

Realism in literature is basically the successor to romanticism. It first took off and gained footing in 19th century France. The literary style is a more straightforward and realistic style of writing in comparison to romanticism which was all about exaggeration and symbolism. Realism is often interchangeable with naturalism and branches out into regionalism which is interchangeable with local color. This type of writing is responsible for one of the greatest era of literary works.

Realism was a huge movement in late 1800s to early 1900s. All art forms were influenced by it. Writers, artists, actors and more started taking a more simple direction and tried to depict life as it actually was. In visual art it was common to see ordinary people doing every day

Romanticism can be used to describe a time period when poets, painters, essayists and composers increasingly came to view nature itself as the greatest teacher (Sayre 177). Romantic artist believed that the past Classical values of dominance were over. Romanticism believed by a new way of living one where emotion and feeling can into play. Romantics had a very deep and passionate feeling for the beauty of nature and how it corresponds to life. The emotion of the new view of an individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures in romanticism (Britannica). I feel that people felt a time of relief when painting they did not need to feel like they were subject to a certain

Realism came about in literary works in the 19th century, and portrayed real life unlike the previous Enlightenment and Romanticism movements prior. Writers and people were sick of the neat, happy stories and endings that were written by the two previous movements, and those people wanted something they could relate to. Because of this, Realistic writers wrote about the boring, ordinary lives that regular folks led and did not sugar-coat anything that occurred but was brutally honest. In the words of Randall Craig, “Realistic writers educate readers, not through humiliation, but by familiarizing them with a re-presented world and enabling them to discover the rules by which it works and to apply them both to the fictional and extra-fictional

Realism is the portrayal of the reality of everyday life and period of literature between 1850-1900. Realist fictions speculate myths, assumptions, social norms, sentimentality, collective wisdom, and prejudices. Realism stories are usually about the middle-class people, and it aims to show a truthful portrayal of truth. Regionalism is a class of realist literature distinguished by closeness to the habits, language, dialects, manners, history, traditions, beliefs of a particular geographical region. Regionalism manifests the characters of both realism and romanticism. Romanticism is cultural the period from 1830-1860 in America. Humankind is naturally good. The characteristics of romanticism are passion and emotion, nature over the man, spiritual, intuition, and insight. "A White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an example of local color because of its realism. Jewett uses characteristics of regionalism like dialogue to show the contrast between the locals and outsiders, habits, their daily activities, the dress, features of a place. "Editha" by William is the story of realism which has many characteristics of realism like details about war; he uses dialect to hold out the trend of the story, using middle-class peoples character. Dean Howell uses a part of romantic style but all together its categorized as one of the