Plan - Realism in Great Expectations and Robinson Crusoe
‘Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it.’ (Eugène Ionesco) Discuss the relation between realist literature and the world it represents.
Actual Quote “Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.”
Start by talking about realism and realist literature. Realism began in the 19th century?
My interpretation of the question.
Explain that the essay will respond to the quote with reference to Robinson Crusoe and Great Expectations.
I will study how the texts attempt to construct reality with issues such as gender and race but do both have problematic features that support the argument raised by Ionesco.
Realism began in the 19th century? Defoe seen as the father of realism
Insert and analyse quotes where possible and respond to critics/opinions.
Realism in Robinson Crusoe
1. Realism
‘The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.’ (Preface to Robinson Crusoe)
‘Given its accumulation of ‘realistic’ descriptions and detail, its capacity to name and map out time and space as if it mirrored reality, realist fiction emerged as part of a culture obsessed with the truths and realities of an increasingly scientific and secular world’ (Sean Purchase, Key Concepts in Victorian Literature (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 185)
‘According to Marxist critics, for example, realist Victorian fiction… embodies middle-class ideologies and values, so that the very discourse of “realism” it provides is really a middle-class adaptation of reality from the outset’ (Purchase, p. 186)
In The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt identified the following elements as characteristic of the early novel:
A concern to account for
Actual Quote “Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.”
Start by talking about realism and realist literature. Realism began in the 19th century?
My interpretation of the question.
Explain that the essay will respond to the quote with reference to Robinson Crusoe and Great Expectations.
I will study how the texts attempt to construct reality with issues such as gender and race but do both have problematic features that support the argument raised by Ionesco.
Realism began in the 19th century? Defoe seen as the father of realism
Insert and analyse quotes where possible and respond to critics/opinions.
Realism in Robinson Crusoe
1. Realism
‘The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.’ (Preface to Robinson Crusoe)
‘Given its accumulation of ‘realistic’ descriptions and detail, its capacity to name and map out time and space as if it mirrored reality, realist fiction emerged as part of a culture obsessed with the truths and realities of an increasingly scientific and secular world’ (Sean Purchase, Key Concepts in Victorian Literature (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 185)
‘According to Marxist critics, for example, realist Victorian fiction… embodies middle-class ideologies and values, so that the very discourse of “realism” it provides is really a middle-class adaptation of reality from the outset’ (Purchase, p. 186)
In The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt identified the following elements as characteristic of the early novel:
A concern to account for