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Realist Period

Historical And Literary Periods
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A mid-to-late 19th-century literary movement emphasizing accurate representation of reality and ordinary life. Rejected Romanticism's idealism and emphasized social documentation.

Detailed Definition
The Realist Period transformed poetry through commitment to accurate representation and social documentation. Poets engaged with ordinary life and social realism. This period appears in poetry through detailed and accurate observation, focus on ordinary life and characters, engagement with social issues and inequality, rejection of Romantic idealization, formal control combined with realistic content, and establishment of realist poetry as foundational to modern poetry and social engagement.
Example
Example in poetry:
Realist Period poetry, though less prominent than in prose, focused on depicting life truthfully and without romantic sentimentality, often exploring the hardships of everyday existence for the working class; William Dean Howells, a key figure in the Realist Period, advocated for literature that faithfully represented "the smiling aspects of life that are the more typical"; A poet could adopt a plain, unadorned diction to describe the mundane, repetitive work of a factory laborer, eschewing flowery language, typical of the Realist Period; The poem might focus on a minute, ordinary detail, like the cracked paint on a tenement wall or the smell of coal smoke, to anchor the work in the material world, a Realist Period trait; Later, poets like Edgar Lee Masters in Spoon River Anthology used direct, often bleak epitaphs to reveal the unvarnished lives and secrets of small-town inhabitants, a key Realist Period example; A poem written in the voice of a pragmatic, unsentimental farmer or shopkeeper struggling with economic shifts would embody the spirit of the Realist Period.
Additional Notes
The Realist Period (mid-19th century) emphasised the truthful, detailed representation of everyday life, rejecting romantic idealism and focusing on the ordinary experiences of middle- and working-class people. In poetry, Realism explored social issues, moral dilemmas, and psychological depth through plain diction and vivid imagery. Writers such as George Crabbe and later Thomas Hardy bridged Romanticism and Modernism through their unflinching portrayal of human struggle and the natural world.
Also Known As
Realism Realist Movement Realist Era
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