Literary Realism Essay Example
Literary realism is the trend, beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors, towards depictions of contemporary life and society as it was, or is. In the spirit of general "realism," Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_realism Realism
Even though there are rumblings of it in earlier decades (Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, for instance, published in 1850), realism doesn't become the dominant literary style in the U.S. until the 1870s. And it's the influence of one hugely important novelist and literary critic, a guy named William Dean Howells (his most famous novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885), that really makes it dominant. Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain are the movement's most famous practitioners.
So how can you tell "realist" literature when you see it? There are a few ways. * Realism tries hard (as its name suggests) to present the world as it really is -- the way, for instance, a photograph might capture it. Howells writes that "realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." Since it tries so hard to be truthful, realist literature, unlike much of the "romantic" writing that preceded it, never feels overblown, the way a fairy tale or a parable or a dream might. And it's rarely sentimental or emotional. It tends to read like a plain, sensible, sober account of whatever action it's describing. * This concern with delivering plain and simple truth leads realists to fill their works with details and facts drawn from everyday life. They can be facts about domestic life, about families and genealogies, about history, about politics, about business and finance, about geographical places...whatever. But to make us believe in the reality of the worlds they show us,
Even though there are rumblings of it in earlier decades (Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, for instance, published in 1850), realism doesn't become the dominant literary style in the U.S. until the 1870s. And it's the influence of one hugely important novelist and literary critic, a guy named William Dean Howells (his most famous novel is The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885), that really makes it dominant. Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain are the movement's most famous practitioners.
So how can you tell "realist" literature when you see it? There are a few ways. * Realism tries hard (as its name suggests) to present the world as it really is -- the way, for instance, a photograph might capture it. Howells writes that "realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." Since it tries so hard to be truthful, realist literature, unlike much of the "romantic" writing that preceded it, never feels overblown, the way a fairy tale or a parable or a dream might. And it's rarely sentimental or emotional. It tends to read like a plain, sensible, sober account of whatever action it's describing. * This concern with delivering plain and simple truth leads realists to fill their works with details and facts drawn from everyday life. They can be facts about domestic life, about families and genealogies, about history, about politics, about business and finance, about geographical places...whatever. But to make us believe in the reality of the worlds they show us,