Literary Realism

7 Key excerpts on "Literary Realism"

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  eBook - ePub

  Reading the American Novel 1865 - 1914

  • G. R. Thompson(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 Of Realism and Reality Definitions and Contexts

  As a literary term, realism normally refers to a theory and practice of fiction in which the artistic goal is to portray “life as it is” – rather than intensified or as it should be – and in simple direct language rather than striving for striking metaphors and indulging in rhetorical flourishes. The elevated subject matter of classic tragedy, or the poetic elements of optative romanticism, or the sentimental aspects of domestic novels and romances, or the hair-raising events of gothic romances were to be downplayed or avoided in favor of the everyday, average, prosaic aspects of life.

  Realism in this sense was especially prominent in France, England, the United States, and Russia from about the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond). But there are realistic, mimetic elements in works written centuries before: in the Iliad and the Odyssey (c. eighth century bc), in the plays of Sophocles (496–406 BC), in Boccaccio's Decameron tales (1351–1353) and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400), in the plays of Shakespeare (1564–1616) and other Renaissance dramatists. Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615) presents a hybrid form of a romance and novel in which the interplay of worldviews is centrally informed by the mixture of realism with idealized romanticism. Many consider this seventeenth-century work the cornerstone of the modern novel.

  In the English-speaking world, literary historians generally point to the principal eighteenth-century British novelists as anticipating the nineteenth century in the development of modern realism. In American literature, the primary meaning of realism indicates a period: the historical era from about a decade after the American Civil War to a decade or two after World War I.1 But Literary Realism, even when confined to a historical period, is not a single undiversified idea or theoretical program or movement. In both Britain and America, major fictional forms partaking of both realism and romance included the domestic novel , the novel of manners , and the sentimental novel . In America there was an important, predominantly realist, movement toward regionalism , within which broad rubric a form called local color is sometimes distinguished. Both centrally involve a forceful vernacular style (idiomatic spoken language), often in dialect (regional or ethnic idiom). In addition, we can identify, at the minimum, several forms of realist theory and practice in Europe and America: objective realism , compassionate realism , benevolent realism , and sentimental realism . There is also a distinction to be made between intense “social reformist” realism and “quiet” realism. Variations on realism and anti-romance are also in tension with, or in complementary relation to, impressionism and expressionism and most especially naturalism .2

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  CLEP® American Literature Book + Online

  • Jacob Stratman(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Research & Education Association

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 Realism and Naturalism (1865–1910) REALISM

  I am making a slight change to the dates that the College Board (creators of the CLEP tests) states in its literature. Some scholars believe that realism as a literary movement began closer to 1870, but many more scholars point to the beginning of the Civil War as the beginning of American Literary Realism. Bullets, bloodshed, and brotherly bickering ushered in a reality that reacted strongly to the idyllic existence American romanticism painted. Then, after the battles ended, America began to grow and to expand its urban areas at the expense of its rural areas. The Industrial Revolution and increased European immigration caused a boom in urban populations. Post–Civil War America found itself in an existence of disillusionment and cynicism. Major technological breakthroughs also occurred at the end of the nineteenth century: the invention of the telephone, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, and, of course, the introduction of the automobile. So Literary Realism is the label we give to those works that attempt to portray life as it actually is and not simply as the writer wishes (the latter being idealism). The brief historical information just mentioned is important because those incidents influenced writers who focused their plots and characters on the very immediate happenings of people in particular cultural moments. Realism is very interested in the mundane episodes of middle-class life; therefore, realist novels tended to lean towards social reform. Also, writers took it upon themselves to critically comment on America’s politics, economics, industry, and social issues, as well as gender, class, and race issues.

  Naturalism

  Literary naturalism is said to be a product of scientific determinism. Here’s a simple definition: You are controlled by your environment. There is no hope for you. Dreams come and dreams go. You are controlled by your gender, race, socioeconomic standing, and ethnicity. There is a glass ceiling and you will hit it every time you venture beyond your status. Depressing, huh? Yes, it is. There is more to the literary movement than that, of course. Naturalism was greatly influenced by the work of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Karl Marx, and Emile Zola, and other naturalists who posited that humans are not that different from animals in that they merely respond to natural and environmental forces without fully understanding the forces or their reactions to them. What is also important about naturalist fiction is that the author and the narrator are amoral in their depictions of the characters and the plot: they do not judge or editorialize; they merely observe.

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  Beginning Realism

  • Steven Earnshaw(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  There is a difference between a circular argument, and using a method which shuttles backwards and forward between ideas about Realism and (possibly) Realist novels. There is little doubt that the literary period discussed so far is characterised by discussions about Realism, what it is and what it might be, along with the part that the novel plays in this. The term ‘Realism’ is not therefore some abstract category imposed retrospectively, but a recognition of an aesthetic and cultural debate identified as such at the time. Our understanding of this debate is a mixture of placing it within its contemporary context – what it meant for these writers, artists and critics in the nineteenth century – and how we respond to that now, and trying to make sense of it. Realism was a dominant aesthetic with many facets which resound down to the present day. From the nineteenth century until now it has remained a contested idea, a way of coordinating thinking about representation and the world represented, at various levels of authorial and narratorial self-consciousness. Perhaps, rather than conceiving of Realism as a fixed category, it is more useful to think of it as an ongoing premise, one that we see differently argued and rendered in different ways.

  The typical Realist novel

  That just leaves me with having to suggest a typical Realist novel. The problem here is the obverse of Middlemarch ’s status as ‘the’ Realist novel: no Realist novel is likely to have all of the features I have so far laid out. What I have tried to do is suggest a number of novels that, when taken together, give a good idea of the Realist novel. Trollope’s The Warden and Barchester Towers are very typical – aware of discussions centred on Realism, and executing their art within this knowledge – yet not as philosophically intent as Eliot. The same can be said of the two Mrs Oliphant novels I have referred to, Phoebe Junior and Hester . They are firmly within the parameters of Realism, but it can also be pointed out that they have some reliance on other books, in particular, more than a passing reference to The Warden . But then Middlemarch owes something to Harriet Martineau’s Deerbrook in its focus on a troubled doctor. The Mill on the Floss has greater typicality than Middlemarch

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  Literature and Materialisms

  • Frederic Neyrat(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  an artist needs always to make choice about which details to include and which to exclude, as well as how details should be arranged and presented. Even a photograph must always be taken from a particular angle and focused in a specific manner, with some material included and some left out of its frame. The details involved in an apparently simple action, such as a woman crossing her room to open the door after hearing a knock, are theoretically infinite, as are the angles from which the action might be described in a literary text (including the point of view, for instance, of somebody listening from an apartment one story down). (44)

  Barrish’s comment instantiates what I call the classic discourse on Literary Realism. By this, I mean the identification of the paradox that is at play in every realist text: Whereas a realist perspective is supposed to reflect reality, in fact it interprets it and subjectively selects the parts of reality to be stressed. This paradox is explained in every dictionary of literary terms. For example, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms stresses the contradiction between the claim that Literary Realism is “a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or ‘reflecting’ faithfully an actual way of life” and the necessity of using a “system of conventions” to produce “a lifelike illusion of some ‘real’ world outside the text, by processes of selection, exclusion, description, and manners of addressing the reader.”4

  That said, do not believe that only academics know that a paradox lies at the core of any realist literary attempt – as a novelist, James knew that very well. It is true that, in the essay to which I already referred, James argues that the art of fiction is not only after a “make-believe,” but that its goal is to give “a direct impression of life”5 . But do not presume that James only asks the writer to imitate life, to copy it. In fact, James insists on the necessity of giving a “direct” impression of reality to avert what would be the worst thing to do for a writer, that is to say applying a form a priori onto the things to be described: “the form is to be appreciated after the fact” (50). The call for a “direct impression of life” turns out to be a warning to the writer, and an indication of what first has to be made: A writer needs to get rid of any preexisting form , any model, in order to create a specific form commensurate to the situation to be described

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  Reading Between the Lines

  A Christian Guide to Literature

  • Gene Edward Veith Jr.(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Crossway

    (Publisher)

  If the social realists focused on society, sometimes at the expense of the individual, another branch of realists delved into the human mind to create a psychological realism. The rise of modern psychology encour aged the view that, as far as human beings are concerned, the mind is the locus of reality. That is, reality is mediated through a person’s con sciousness, which is shaped by early experiences and innate mythical pat terns as well as by the environment. Writers such as Henry James explored the infinitely subtle nuances of individual personalities. James Joyce invented the stream-of-consciousness novel, reproducing the inner life of his characters and relating them to primal myths and psychologi cal archetypes. In doing so, he pushed realism itself closer to fantasy.

  The best modern realistic novelists draw on both the outer and the inner realities. William Faulkner captured the people and places of the backwoods South in vivid detail, but he also plunged into the minds of the characters, reflecting the complexity of their thoughts and emo tions in the very style of his prose. Faulkner’s realism anatomized the social structure of the South while at the same time affirming the com plexity and the dignity of his characters. Faulkner is profoundly demo cratic in the respect he shows for ordinary people. His “white trash” share-croppers, black farm hands, and seedy aristocrats lack refinement, but he never belittles them. Instead, he reveals that ordi nary life contains material enough for the highest art.

  The same can be said for Hemingway and Steinbeck, the other great modern American realists. Hemingway’s style, nearly opposite to Faulkner’s, is spare, terse, and cut to the bone. Disdaining flowery descriptions and commentary by the narrator, Hemingway’s mastery of dialogue and point of view create the effect of immersing the reader in the world of the characters. Steinbeck was more interested in the social problems of the country, but he never neglected the individual, whom he set against the backdrop of a natural world evocatively described. Steinbeck often turned to the Bible to amplify his themes (consider his titles East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath), and, like Faulkner, operated with a strong moral sensibility.

  From a Christian point of view, realism can be a way of coming to grips with the world and the human condition. Christianity is not primarily subjective, but objective. That is, it is not simply a matter of mystical feelings experienced in the private sanctum of the self. Rather, Christianity is the revelation of a God who exists independently of the self, a God who created the external world, who became incarnate in that world, who acts in history, and who calls His people to become involved in society through concrete moral actions. Christians will therefore be drawn to Literary Realism, interpreting what they read the same way they interpret what they experience, in light of their faith. In this regard, it does not matter too much if the author of a realistic novel is a Christian or not. If the novel is truly realistic, if it reflects the world as it actually is, the Christian reader can notice the same patterns of creation, sin, and love evident everywhere in “real life.”

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  Marxism Goes to the Movies

  • Mike Wayne(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Within the Marxist tradition, naturalism represents an approach to social reality that falls short of realism proper. The most penetrating critique of naturalism in the Marxist tradition was developed by Georg Lukács in relation to literature. He traced the development of realism to the emergence of the historical novel in the early nineteenth century. The specifically historical novel requires the ‘derivation of the individuality of characters from the historical peculiarity of their age’, 29 which means exploring the relationship between the character and their environment. According to Lukács, the earlier eighteenth-century realistic social novels had not yet developed a sense of historical time and place, which Lukács associates also with an ability to explore or reveal when and how the contemporary world developed as it has. One of the great features of realism is its ability to show process, something which the Cuban revolutionary filmmaker, Julio Garcia Espinosa also insisted on: ‘We maintain that … cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems,’ he wrote. 30 Prior to the historical novel proper, Swift, Voltaire and Diderot set their satirical novels in fantasy or indeterminate places and the penetrating insights they bring are of their own society but which they cannot represent in historical terms. The later development of a historical sense understands ‘history as the concrete precondition of the present’. 31 For Lukács, our ability to see and think historically is itself historically determined. It was the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars and the rise and fall of Napoleon, which for the first time made history a mass experience and moreover on a European scale

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  A History of German Literature

  From the Beginnings to the Present Day

  • Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich, Helmut Hoffacker, Bernd Lutz, Volker Meid, Ralf Schnell, Peter Stein, Inge Stephan(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Although Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, Martin Walser, Uwe Johnson and Siegfried Lenz were and remain to this day the outstanding individual figures of the 1960s, there were also a number of major literary trends and developments that were of equal importance in shaping the era. One of the key words describing prose between 1961 and 1969, for example, is ‘descriptive literature’. Despite the derision that frequently accompanied this term at the time, it is nevertheless a highly apt definition for a broad spectrum of divergent prose texts whose stylistic form shared the common feature of a desire to come close to reality, consciousness, situations and actions. They constitute realistic narrative approaches deriving not from a socially critical perspective, but rather expressing social factuality itself in a critical way, and with extreme density and concentration.

  The most systematic and far-reaching attempt to make a breakthrough towards realistic descriptive literature was made from 1964 onwards by the so-called ‘Cologne School’ of New Realism. Dieter Wellershoff, initiator, mentor and theoretician, as well as literary exponent of this group (Ein schöner Tag—A Lovely Day, 1966; Die Schattengrenze—The Shadow Frontier, 1969), defined its agenda by precisely demarcating it from the fictional nature of grotesque and satirical prose: Tantastic, grotesque, satirical literature criticised society by confronting it with an exaggerated, distorted picture. New Realism criticises society immanently by means of precise scrutiny. It is a form of criticism deriving not from opinions, but from the production of experience.’ This attempt at self-definition, however, only inadequately encompasses the forms in which New Realism was actually put into practice. Within the domain of Realism, authors such as Günter Herburger (Eine gleichmässige Landschaft—A Symmetrical Landscape, 1964; Die Messe—The Mass, 1969; Jesus in Osaka, 1970), Günter Seuren (Das Gatter—The Lattice, 1964; Lebeck, 1968), Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (Die Umarmung—The Embrace, 1965; Raupenbahn—The Caterpillar Track, 1966; Keiner weiss mehr—Noone Knows Any More, 1968), as well as Wellershoff himself, represent substantially divergent writing styles that throw into doubt rather than confirm Wellershoff’s definition of realistic writing. This is most apparent in the writing methods of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, which extended into an objectivisation of the objects being narrated whereby the narrative barely stopped short of abolishing itself. Spheres of life and situations of existential importance (birth, love, death, sexuality), are represented by making them represent and express themselves. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann’s posthumously published collage volume Rom Blicke (Rome Vistas),

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