Style
Rebecca Harding Davis' literary style is most commonly labeled as realism. Her literary works mark a transition from romanticism to literary realism. For instance, "Life on the Iron Mills" utilizes a realistic style comparable to writers in the height of American literary realism, which came two decades after the text was published. Although realism is the genre most prominently attached to Harding Davis' collective works, naturalism is also prevalent in her writing style. Naturalism is thematically linked to realism. Where realists, like Harding Davis, endeavor to depict reality, naturalists expand on that reality by approaching the scientific and or psychological influences on characters due to their environments. In Life in the Iron Mills, the two genres are blended to create a realistic depiction of the everyday life of iron mill worker Hugh Wolfe, as well as illustrate the effects of that environment on him. In addition to realism and naturalism, Harding Davis also published works employing such literary genres as the gothic and folklore.
Read more about this topic: Rebecca Harding Davis
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)