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Silas Lapham Research Paper

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The relevant outgrowth of American realism, another relatable writing tendency derived in 1880s. Similar as the purport of realism, Naturalism detailed theto suggest that social heredity and the environment had an inevitable effect in shaping human characteristic (Elliot 497). It opposed to literacy movements in the early period, such as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects receive highly symbolic, idealistic disposition. However, naturalism contained relatively passive and obscure view of the world. Unlike the realism, it focuses more on literary technique, which insinuated a philosophical position: the human beings are considered as "human beasts" (Elliot 502). By utilizing a version of the scientific method to illustrate the surrounding, naturalism writers construct the laws behind the forces that govern human lives, which could be studied and understood by the audience. From the naturalism literature, nature was sculptured as an indifferent force acting in the lives of human beings (Elliot 507). The universe, typically, has been described as …show more content…

In his writing, he strongly discouraged the artificial sentimentality and romanticism elements in American fiction. The rise of Silas Lapham (1885) has been briefly considered Howells' finest work which displayed the economic depression but moral salvation of an honorable businessman in a Boston society controlled by clans that inherited positions of power (Jones 128). Distinctly, a hazard of new fortune, published in 1890, portrays corrupt urban problems of New York City caused by industrialization, immigration, and conflicts between socialism and capitalism. It reveals the most intolerable but accurate reality behind the surface the society to the majority (Jones

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