American Realist Narratives and the Advent of the Twentieth Century

As the dominant literary form at the turn of the twentieth century, the realist novel sought to present to its readers legible and legitimate depictions of life. And although conscious of itself as an art form then, the ‘realist novel’ nevertheless carried within its name the very significant and loaded word ‘real.’ This panel seeks papers that explore the narratives told by realist novels, especially at the turn of the twentieth century. Papers could, for instance, consider the following issues and things in relation to realism: vestiges of wars like the U.S.-Mexican and American Civil; inter-class and inter-racial encounters; ethical dilemmas faced by individuals of the middle and working classes; gender and sexuality in a modernizing world; the onset of modernity and even modernism; internal U.S. migrations; capitalism; the boom of American cities; manufacturing in American cities; automobiles and roads; the renewed sense of Manifest Destiny the U.S. saw near the end of the nineteenth century; the continued development of the American West; the emergence of railroads and agriculture in the West; literary regionalism and naturalism.