Some hints

Salam, while looking up for some questinos to be viewed for the magister, i stoped at some pooints and thought to bring them to discussion here ( who knows they might be this years' question) so w e really need to share our knowldge about everything we know
The first question that came across was this :

1)”Although realism became the dominant mode in American writing after the Civil War, there were romantics and escape artists too in the closing decades of the nineteenth century”. Discuss and illustrate with two works of your choice.
Though i never studied Realism in my class, but I can guess from this question Mark Twain's masterpiece Hucklubuury Finn, the way Huck runs aways to nature's arms living anything behing and he ratehr preferd to "go to hell" is one of the main Romantic trends. What do you think ?

hello wonderland
I disagree with you dear mate because the purpose behind the The adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is to attack the romantic thinking. Through the character of Tom Sawyer the writer could show the reader the ridiculousness of the romatic thinking, and it is at the end of the novel that we come to realize that fact. The end is very significant to the aim of the novel. As the novel progresses the reader is drawn into the world that Huck lives in, and the journey he is traveling on with Jim. Unfortunately the story loses its flavour when we become aware of Tom's lie. By hating Tom, we will hate his romantik thinking that stems from his wild imagination. The language used,and how the characters are portrayed and presented is another proof that The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is a realistic novel. So, in my opinion, Mark Twain's novel is not the right choice.
PS: please correct me if i'm wrong

Your mate is completely right Wonderland, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is undoubtedly a realistic novel. I came accross many researches on the matter dealing with realism and satire of imagination concerning the novel.

I think, the romantic and escapist works of American literature you're refering to are those which fall in the categories of Transcendentalist literature and Romantic literature.
Main figures of transcendentalim are:
Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (who explores the harmony between man and nature) I think Emerson is somehow a good example you can use as a transition. In fact, his works display a sort of balance between passionate fantasy and clarity typical of realist writing.