A PowerPoint pres

1. Significance of Charles Darwin’s
Origins of Species

2. Historical Context and Two States of Thought:
Realism
 A reaction against romanticism, an interest
in scientific method, the systematizing of the
study of documentary history, and the
influence of rational philosophy all affected
the rise of realism.
 Broadly defined as "the faithful
representation of reality" or "verisimilitude,"
realism is a literary technique practiced by
many schools of writing.
 Although strictly speaking, realism is a
technique, it also denotes a particular kind of
subject matter.
 In American literature, the term "realism"
encompasses the period of time from the
Civil War to the turn of the century during
which William Dean Howells, Rebecca
Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark
Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to
accurate representation and an exploration
of American lives in various contexts.

3. Continued….
Characteristics: (from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition)
 Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality
with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot
 Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often
the subject.
 Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in
explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.
 Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of
an insurgent middle class.
 Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic
elements of naturalistic novels and romances.
 Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or
matter-of-fact.
 Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial
comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses.
 Interior or psychological realism a variant form.

4. Naturalism
 This literary movement , like its predecessor Realism, found
expression almost exclusively within the novel.
-Naturalism also found its greatest number of practitioners in
America shortly before and after the turn of the twentieth
century.
 Naturalism sought to go further and be more explanatory
than Realism by identifying the underlying causes for a
person’s actions or beliefs.
- The thinking was that certain factors, such as heredity and
social conditions, were unavoidable determinants in one’s
life.
 There was in the late nineteenth century a fashion in
sociology to apply evolutionary theory to human social
woes. This line of thinking came to be knows as Social
Darwinism, and today is recognized as the
systematized, scientific racism that it is.

5. Works on the subject of Naturalism
 The work of French novelist
and playwright Emile Zola’s
most famous contribution to
Naturalism was Les Rougon-
Macquart,
-a collection of 20 novels that
-follow two families over the course
of five generations. One of the
families is privileged, the other
impoverished.
-Takes place during the rule of
Napoleon III.
 One of the first truly Naturalist
works of literature, and
certainly the first in
America, was Stephen Crane’s
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.
-vulgar dialect of the persons
portrayed.
-portrayed abject poverty exactly as
it was.

6. Charles Darwin
 Charles Robert Darwin born 1809, was born
the fifth of six children into a wealthy
Shropshire gentry family in the small market
town of Shrewsbury.
 In October 1825 Darwin went to Edinburgh
University with his brother Erasmus to study
medicine with a view to becoming a physician.
While in Edinburgh Darwin investigated
marine invertebrates with the guidance of
Robert Grant.
 His name appeared in print when some of his
records of insect captures were published by
Stephens in his British Entomology in 1829.
 On the Origin of Species by means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life is published in
London on 24 November 24, 1859 by John
Murray
 Dies 19 April 19, 1882, aged seventy-three.
Buried in Westminster Abbey, April 26.

7. The Origins of Species
 Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually
evolve through a process he called "natural
selection."
-In natural selection, organisms with genetic
variations that suit their environment tend to
propagate more descendants than organisms of
the same species that lack the variation, thus
influencing the overall genetic makeup of the
species.
 It was controversial because it contradicted
religious beliefs which underlay the then current
theories of biology.
 Darwin’s book was the culmination of evidence
he had accumulated on the voyage of the Beagle
in the 1830s and added to through continuing
investigations and experiments since his return.

8.  His theory of evolution by natural selection, now the unifying theory of
the life sciences, explained where all of the astonishingly diverse kinds
of living things came from and how they became exquisitely adapted to
their particular environments.
 His theory reconciled a host of diverse kinds of evidence such as the
progressive nature of fossil forms in the geological record, the
geographical distribution of species, recapitulative appearances in
embryology, homologous structures, vestigial organs and nesting
taxonomic relationships.
 In further works Darwin demonstrated that the difference between
humans and other animals is one of degree not kind.
 Subsequent developments in genetics and molecular biology led to
modifications in accepted evolutionary theory, but Darwin's ideas
remain central to the field.

9. The impact of The Origins of Species
 Darwin’s Origin of Species denied a divine hand in creation. In
consequence, those who read it inferred that no absolute good or
absolute evil exists.
-Paradoxically, the development of human society was an attempt to
escape from the natural selection. Human beings create social
systems in order to protect themselves from the uncontrollable
forces of nature.
 Evolutionary theory provoked a wave of pessimism and
skepticism about the human condition. Darwin made it necessary
to re-evaluate the most essential concepts which humanity had
created for the last 2000 years:
man, nature, consciousness, God, and the soul.
 Controversy over Darwin's ideas deepened with the publication of
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), in
which he presented evidence of man's evolution from apes.

10. Works Cited
 Campbell, Donna M. "Realism in American  http://www.victorianweb.org/science/darwi
Literature, 1860-1890." Literary n/diniejko.html
Movements. Dept. of English, Washington
State University.
http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/rea
lism.htm
 Wyhe, John. Ed 2002. “The Complete Work
of Charles Darwin Online. http://darwin-
online.org.uk/
 http://www.online-
literature.com/periods/naturalism.php
 http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-
charles-darwin/
 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-
history/origin-of-species-is-published