Pagan Myth and Christian Symbol in Three American Realist Short Stories

ABSTRACT Realism is often seen as largely antithetical to the world of romance and myth. This article, by considering three stories from different stages of the realist movement in American literature, argues that while this view of realism is largely accurate, it does not allow for the elements of cosmological order that characterized romance and myth and that still drew realism toward them, in particular the cosmological order of the classical and Christian worlds. Echoes, allusions, and elements of those worlds rest as the backdrop of Fitz-James O’Brien’s “The Diamond Lens” (1858), Ambrose Bierce’s “A Horseman in the Sky” (1889), and Theodore Dreiser’s “The Lost Phoebe” (1916), dramatizing in each case a subtle tension between modern and earlier worlds.