In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worth of notice, it shows everything to be rife with significance. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.
In its own time, realism was the subject of controversy; debates over the suitability of realism as a mode of representation led to a critical exchange known as the realism war. Click here for a brief overview. The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in the twentieth century. Howellsian realism fell into disfavor, however, as part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition.
Budd, among others, in the Cambridge Guide to Realism and Naturalism. Definitions Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.
Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. They know when you've been sleeping, they know when you're awake, they know when you've been good and bad, so… Well, yeah. They move from character to character, from scene to scene, from one place to another—because they just know it all.
Knowing it all means these narrators know the details of pretty much everything, which is a pretty convenient thing if what you're trying to do is create a sense of reality in your novel. Of course, not all Realist literature is told from the omniscient narrator point of view—there are plenty of first-person narrators , for example, in Realist literature.
Leo Tolstoy is famous for his use of the omniscient narrator. Check out how the omniscient narrator moves between different characters in these examples from Anna Karenina. The omniscient narrator of George Eliot's Middlemarch makes all kinds of general statements about men and women in these quotations from the novel.
Verisimilitude is a sexy word meaning truthiness. Realist literature is famous for the way it tries to create a world that seems real or true; Realist writers want us to believe that we're watching real life unfold on the page. Realist writers go out of their way to make sure that they get their facts straight.
If a Realist writer is writing about London in , you can bet that writer either lives in London or has done some serious research on London, because he or she would want the London of the novel to be as true to life as possible. In fact, Realism was heavily influenced by journalistic techniques, and that's no surprise, given that journalism at the time was also taking off.
Realist writers often write like journalists, and their attention to specific facts and specific details only adds to the sense of verisimilitude in their fictional works. Check out how Leo Tolstoy creates verisimilitude when writing about warfare and battlefields in War and Peace Quotes 2 and 3.
And here is Tolstoy again, this time showing us just how horrible it is to visit the doctor in his novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. You can't talk about Realism without talking about the novel. The novel is the one genre that is most closely associated with the rise of Realism as a movement: if we tick off on your fingers the most famous works of Realist literature, you'll probably come up with the titles of a bunch of novels, like Anna Karenina , Madame Bovary , Middlemarch , The Brothers Karamazov , and so on.
Realist writers do write in other genres, too, but it's the novel that is at the heart of the Realist tradition. Realist writers were drawn to the novel for several reasons, but most of all, the novel is big , and it's flexible. Realism is all about detail, after all, and you can fit a whole lot more detail into —or 1,—pages of writing than you can fit into the fourteen lines of a sonnet.
The novel also gives you space to talk about loads of different issues and different characters. In Tolstoy's gigantic novel War and Peace , for example, there are over different characters. That's like having all of your Facebook friends covered in one single book.
Do you even know all of your Facebook friends? Tolstoy sure does. Want to see one of the greatest Victorian novelists in action? Check out Charles Dickens's Great Expectations here. How about delving into one of the longest works of Realism ever written?
Yup, it's Tolstoy's War and Peace. Like most genres and literary movements, realism features fundamental, common, and recurring themes and motifs. Here are some common examples of those themes and conventions in literary realism:. Due to the changes in class structure with the developments of the second half of the 19th century, the novel became extremely popular. Literacy grew and written works were more accessible. Realism also enhanced the prevalence of novels since their subject matter often focused on characters and themes important and relatable to the working class, middle class, and social mobility.
It is beneficial, for understanding literary realism, to get a sense of how well-known writers feel about this technique and movement. There is often confusion in trying to differentiate literary works that feature realism and those that feature naturalism.
The writers that pioneered the realist movement created complex, relatable characters, while presenting detailed and realistic observations of society. In addition, realism encouraged narration that shifted away from romanticized and poetic language. This allowed writers to adopt a more truthful voice and address conditions of real life, including the realities of war, poverty , etc. It even explores real dialects of people.
Not only does this work to make an interesting story, but it gives people a look into raw and unfiltered conditions of the time. It can also be a powerful commentary to enact change for specific people groups. Now that you know what realism is, you can dive further into magical realism or learn about the wonders of surrealism in literature. All rights reserved.
Elements and Examples. Realism in Literature When trying to understand realism in literature, just think of the word real. History of Realism Realism finds its roots in the early nineteenth century. Realistic characters and setting Comprehensive detail about everyday occurrences Plausible plot a story that could happen in your town Real dialects of the area Character development important Importance in depicting social class.
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