Abraham Cahan, Auguste Comte, and the Positivist Future

The social realist literary movement in America in the latter part of the nineteenth century was, like the Condition of England movement that preceded it, in large part an attempt to come to grips with the changes wrought by industrialization, incorporation, and “the pervasive sense of imminent upheaval and turbulence” that accompanied these changes (Trachtenberg x). This movement was primarily a production of the white middle class, which felt increasingly sidelined by what Henry Adams would call the “whole mechanical consolidation of force” that had “ruthlessly stamped out” the hegemony of the establishment (301). Novels often became sites in which writers attempted to work out the degree to which their commitment to traditional or democratic values could survive the pressure to sell out. Social realist novelists sought to answer pressing questions, such as to what extent could anyone born into, or aspiring to, economic stability retain allegiance to values such as liberty and equality in an age in which everything and everyone was being co-opted; and if resistance was to be imagined, what would it look like—what form would it take

Aesthetics · Allegiance · Art · Consolidation (business · Democracy · Hegemony · Movement (music · Political science · Politics · Positivism · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · Law · Literary, Cultural, Historical Analysis

• Americanizing the Ghetto

  Open Access•Alexander Eisenthal•MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of…•2020

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• The incorporation of America

  Alan Trachtenberg•The incorporation of America•1982

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• The Social Construction of American Realism

  Tony Tanner, Amy Kaplan•The Modern Language Review•1991

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• Howells and the Age of Realism

  Open Access•John W Ward, Everett Carter•American Quarterly•1955

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