The Influence of the Civil War on American Literature
Introduction
The US civil war has continuously served as an essential aspect of American literary history. The civil war has formed a basis for many academic works by both teachers and students. Civil war literature included mostly authentic genres such as diaries and letters. Many famous writers continued producing works even after the civil war. Americans published and read about the civil war as it was going on and the years that succeeded. The literature inundated the cruelty and the shock of the civil war with meaning. The civil war had multiple influences on American literature as analyzed and explained.
A new era of literature known as realism emerged due to changes experienced in American society after the civil war (Brown, 2010). Circulation of money started as a result of the development of the United States from agricultural to an industrial nation. With this change, sense of community was lost, and individualism began especially in bigger towns and interpreted as literature. Mark Twain, a realist writer whose importance to American literature is portrayed in his book The adventure of Huckleberry Fin, emerged. The book describes the story of a boy who runs away after threats from his father. A slave joins the boy, and together, they go through an adventure, which ends happily. Mark Twain technique is very realistic and uses casual language. To writers, realism is not just a style but also a way of using their work to speak the truth and liberate themselves from strange societal conventions.
After the civil war, there emerged a group of writers known as literary comedians. Literal comedians’ writings included older American humor technique. Literary comedians abandoned early writer’s creation of fictional character and took over the roles of less individualized literary comedians in their literary works. To appeal to a national audience, David Ross Locke, for example, wrote as Petroleum V. The nature of writers work consequently shifted from humor to character representation to verbal communication tools like slang, poor spelling, and poor grammar. Most writers’ works were unsatisfactorily done, but Americans at that time found these written works very entertaining. The local colorist was the first group of fiction authors to become famous. Local colorist works portrayed separate groups that had been neglected by writers of the new humor. Bret Harte, doing fictional work achieved a significant level of success as was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Old Town Folks (1869) and Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside stories (1871). Some short stories of the patterns set by these writers still appear.
After the civil war, slaves who were freed had the time to explore their imaginations, and accordingly, Afro American literature developed (Gray, 2011). Afro American writers such as Booker T. Washington emerged. He became famous for his works and was a prominent leader of that time. In his autobiography, Booker T. Washington describes his way to achieving freedom as a contribution he wanted to use to improve the lives of Afro Americans and their incorporation into the American population.
At the beginning of the 20th century, drama and poetry were not very dominant, but this changed when Harriet Monroe published a poetry magazine in 1912. More poets emerged with new styles such as Imagism. Ezra Pound used imagism, which involves a simple, clear, and understandable presentation of poems. Thomas Sterns Eliot’s works seemed irrational and too scholarly due to his distinctive style, which was attributed to his high education, and his poetry involved high intellectual levels.
Conclusion
The civil war brought a new period of literature known as realism. A new crop of writers known as literary comedians who use humor also emerged. Afro American literature was developed by freed slaves and poetry became widespread. Drama was appreciated more.
References
Brown, B., (2010). A sense of things: The object matter of American literature. University of Chicago Press.
Gray, R., (2011). A history of American literature. John Wiley & Sons.