Stephen Crane and The Realist Time Period

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“A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” (Stephen Crane Quotes). This quote is from Stephen Crane, one of America’s foremost Realistic Writers. Stephen Crane (1871-1900), is one of the most influential and top writers of the American Realism time period. The Realism time period lasted from 1865 and lasted until about 1910. For those engaged in serious literary circles, the period was full of upheaval. A literary civil war went on between the romantics and the realists and later, the naturalists. American realists believed that human’s freedom of choice was limited by the power of other forces. Crane was inspired to write by his family: his father, a Methodist minister, and his mother, devout woman dedicated to social concerns, were two of his brothers were journalists. His will to write about war came from his close encounters with the a war correspondent.
Crane became a foreign war correspondent,first in Greece, then, during the Spanish-American War, in Cuba. This is important in Crane life because people thought Crane had never witnessed anything to do with the military or anything to do with battle. This helped Crane out with many of his war stories and novels. The especially helped Crane out with his Civil War story, Red Badge of Courage. Crane challenged and changed the literary world in several ways not just one specific way. Crane Challenged the literary world because this was a time when there was a literary civil war between romantics, realists, and then, naturalists. Crane challenged the romantics and naturalist beliefs with his. Crane change the literary world by using his experience, and his imagination, but at the same ti...

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Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Paula Kepos. Vol. 32. Detroit: Gale
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Carter, Everett. Howells and the Age of Realism . Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1954.
Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957 "The Literature of an Expanding Nation." The Harper American Literature. Donald McQuade, editor. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
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