Literary realism
In 1848, a revolution swept through France and shattered the political order that had supported Romantic art for decades. Jules-François Champfleury emerged as the first theorist of literary realism in the years following this upheaval. He argued that artists must reproduce objective reality without romantic idealization or dramatic embellishment. This movement sought to depict everyday activities and life primarily among middle- or lower-class society. It rejected the grandiose subject matter and supernatural elements that defined the previous era. Realism aimed to show familiar things as they truly are, using secular and empirical rules. Writers began to adopt scientific methods to understand social and moral phenomena. They embraced the positivist spirit of contemporary science which valued experiment and proof over metaphysics. The approach implied that reality exists independently of human belief systems and can be known by the artist. Thomas Reid formulated these ideas in the mid-eighteenth century before Ian Watt later traced modern realism back to Descartes and Locke. The movement represented a direct reaction against the aristocratic norms and scientific rationalization of nature found in Romanticism.
Social realism became an international movement that drew attention to the working classes and criticized the structures maintaining their poverty. Kitchen sink drama developed in Britain during the late 1950s and early 1960s with protagonists described as angry young men living in cramped rented accommodation. John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger from 1956 is thought of as the first work of this genre. It depicts a gritty love-triangle taking place in a one-room flat in the English Midlands. Socialist realism was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 through the Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers. This form demanded truthful representation linked to ideological transformation and education of workers. Naturalism emerged between the 1880s and 1930s using detailed realism to suggest social conditions shaped human character. Émile Zola wrote frank treatments of sexuality and pervasive pessimism about poverty, racism, and violence. Verismo appeared in Italy as a literary movement where authors like Giovanni Verga adopted an objective perspective without commenting on characters. These writers used language coinciding with the social condition of peasants or middle-class figures. The style incorporated vernacular terms and regional Italian dialects especially from Sicily.
George Eliot published Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life between 1871 and 1872 describing it as the greatest novel in the English language. Her work revealed important issues including the Reform Bill of 1832 and the beginnings of railways within a settled community facing unwelcome change. William Dean Howells became the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to United States literature with stories set in the 1880s and 1890s. His popular novel The Rise of Silas Lapham depicted a man falling from materialistic fortune by his own mistakes. Samuel Clemens known as Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 capturing distinctive humorous slang and iconoclasm of the interior country. Stephen Crane wrote fiction primarily as a journalist who saw life at its rawest on slums and battlefields. His Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage received great acclaim when published in 1895 before he died at age 28. Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets from 1893 tells the story of a poor girl whose alcoholic parents fail her and who becomes a prostitute to survive. Arnold Bennett drew on his experience of life in the Staffordshire Potteries for his Clayhanger trilogy published between 1910 and 1918.
Henrik Ibsen began writing middle-period realistic drama prose in the early 1870s that would become enormously influential across Europe. Russia established its first professional theater tradition through playwright Aleksey Pisemsky alongside novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Their work culminated with the establishment of the Moscow Art Theatre by Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Stanislavski developed his system of actor training particularly suited to psychological realism which influenced Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Bulgakov. Anton Chekhov produced plays that were groundbreaking productions at the Moscow Art Theatre during this period. In France, popular bourgeois theater turned to realism through well-made farces written by Eugène Marin Labiche and moral dramas by Émile Augier. Verismo opera incorporated naturalism into post-Romantic Italian traditions depicting sometimes sordid or violent depictions of contemporary everyday life especially among lower classes. Theatrical realism shared stylistic choices with naturalism including focus on ordinary speech and dull settings while asserting individual choice over external forces.
Critics argue that depicting reality is not often realistic since remembered or experienced reality does not always correspond to truth. Catherine Gallagher suggests realistic fiction invariably undermines the ideology it purports to exemplify because appearances are never self-sufficient. Some scholars call realism an impulse to contradict so that its limit leads to either verifiable objective truth or merely relative subjective truth. J.P. Stern countered this position maintaining that looseness makes the term indispensable in common and literary discourse alike. Critics dismiss realism as obvious and simple-minded while denying realistic aesthetic branding it pretentious since it is considered mere reportage not art. There is no pure form of realism and whenever one searches for it it vanishes according to some observers. Realist narratives in the United States during the late nineteenth century focused on larger forces determining lives of characters depicted through agricultural machines portrayed as immense and terrible shredding human bodies without compunction. These machines served as metaphors but contributed to perception that such narratives were more like myth than reality. The movement faces criticism for its supposed inability to address challenges regarding how we understand what is real correctly.
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Common questions
When did literary realism begin and who was its first theorist?
Literary realism began in 1848 following a revolution in France. Jules-François Champfleury emerged as the first theorist of the movement in the years after this upheaval.
What is the difference between social realism and socialist realism?
Social realism became an international movement that drew attention to working classes and criticized structures maintaining poverty. Socialist realism was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 through the Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers to demand truthful representation linked to ideological transformation.
Which novel by George Eliot is considered the greatest in the English language?
George Eliot published Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life between 1871 and 1872 describing it as the greatest novel in the English language. Her work revealed important issues including the Reform Bill of 1832 and the beginnings of railways within a settled community facing unwelcome change.
How did naturalism emerge and what did Émile Zola write about?
Naturalism emerged between the 1880s and 1930s using detailed realism to suggest social conditions shaped human character. Émile Zola wrote frank treatments of sexuality and pervasive pessimism about poverty, racism, and violence.
When did Kitchen sink drama develop and which play started the genre?
Kitchen sink drama developed in Britain during the late 1950s and early 1960s with protagonists described as angry young men living in cramped rented accommodation. John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger from 1956 is thought of as the first work of this genre.