Henry, frank norris, jack london. Plan: I. Introduction II. Main part

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN LITERATURE AFTER THE WAR. (WALT WHITMAN, MARK TWAIN, O. HENRY, FRANK NORRIS, JACK LONDON.
Plan:

I. INTRODUCTION
II. MAIN PART
Chapter 1. American literature at the beginning of XX century
1.1 Genre of a historical novel and its development in American literature
1.2 Important person concerning American realism
Chapter 2. American Literature: 20th century
2.1 American authors in general began to reject the emotional aspects of literature
III. Conclusion
IV. Lest of bibliography




I. INTRODUCTION

After the American Civil War, a new era of literature began: Realism. This was due to the radical changes in American society. The U.S. developed from an agricultural to an industrial society and money started to make the world go round. But along with industrialization and urbanization there came alienation the loss of the community for the individual, especially in big cities and this development was of course to be seen in leterature, too.

One of the most important writers of the second half of the 19th century was Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. „Mark Twain“ is originally the expression of Mississippi boatmen for the depth of water that is needed for a ship’s safe passage.
One can see Twain’s importance for American literature by Ernest hemingway’s statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twain’s „The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin“, which is Twain’s major work. The story is about a boy who is threatened by his father and who runs away because of that. Soon he is joined by a slave called Jim and although Huckleberry Finn knows that he is breaking the law by helping a slave (the novel plys in times of slavery) he decides to do so, following his conscience. The two have to go through a series of adventures before the novel finally comes to ist happy ending. Twain’s style in „Huckleberry Finn“ is very vigorous and realistic and he is mostly using colloquial language. For Mark Twain as well as for other authors of tht time, realism was not a literary technique, but a way of speaking the truth and of liberating themselves of all the strange conventions of society.
One reason for Twain’s success is perhaps that he combined two of the major aims of literature at that time: frontier humor and local color writing or „regionalism“. Because on the one hand the frontier spirit and all ist consequences were very popular but on the other hand people were interested in reading about specific American regions and their specific features¹.