A Concise Companion to Realism
Concise Companions to Literature and Culture
1. Auflage April 2010
320 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
A Concise Companion to Realism offers an accessible introduction to
realism as it has evolved since the 19th century. Though focused on
literature and literary theory, the significance of technology and
the visual arts is also addressed.
* Comprises 17 newly-commissioned essays written by a
distinguished group of contributors, including Slavoj Zizek,
Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton
* Provides the historical, cultural, intellectual, and literary
contexts necessary to understand developments in realism
* Addresses the artistic mediums and technologies such as
painting and film that have helped shape the way we perceive
reality
* Explores literary and pictorial sub-genres, such as naturalism
and socialist realism
* Includes a brief bibliography and suggestions for further
reading at the end of each section
Notes on Contributors x
Foreword by Rachel Bowlby xiv
Acknowledgments xxii
Introduction: Reclaiming Realism 1
Matthew Beaumont
1 Literary Realism Reconsidered: "The world in its length and
breadth" 13
George Levine
2 Realist Synthesis in the Nineteenth Century Novel: "The unity
which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness" 23
Simon Dentith
3 Space, Mobility, and the Novel: "The spirit of place is a
great reality" 50
Josephine McDonagh
4 Fictions of the Real: "All truth with malice in it" 68
Terry Eagleton
5 Naturalism: "Dirt and horror pure and simple" 86
Sally Ledger
6 Realism before and after Photography: "The fantastical form of
a relation among things" 102
Nancy Armstrong
7 The Realist Aesthetic in Painting: "Serious and committed,
ironic and brutal, sincere and full of poetry" 121
Andrew Hemingway
8 Interrupted Dialogues of Realism and Modernism: "The fact of
new forms of life, already born and active" 143
Esther Leslie
9 Socialist Realism: "To depict reality in its revolutionary
development" 160
Brandon Taylor
10 Realism, Modernism, and Photography: "At last, at last the
mask has been torn away" 176
John Roberts
11 Cinematic Realism: "A recreation of the world in its own
image" 195
Laura Marcus
12 The Current of Critical Irrealism: "A moonlit enchanted
night" 211
Michael Lowy
13 Psychoanalysis and the Lacanian Real: "Strange shapes of the
unwrapped primal world" 225
Slavoj Zizek
14 Feminist Theory and the Return of the Real: "What we really
want most out of realism..." 242
Helen Small
15 Realism and Anti-Realism in Contemporary Philosophy: "What's
truth got to do with it?" 259
Christopher Norris
Afterword: A note on literary realism 279
Fredric Jameson
Index 290
kind of enduring claim to realism. The excellent contributors to
this volume investigate with energy and precision the many
different epistemological, historical and theoretical issues which
can arise from such claims, for the novel, journalism, painting,
cinema and still photography. They write from many different points
of view, with a wide historical perspective and through well chosen
examples - but have been cleverly edited into dialogue with one
another. The aims of naturalism, socialist realism and feminism,
and the changes brought about by modernism, for example, are
illuminatingly analysed. This is the way to make progress on any
philosophical issue, and the reader will enjoy taking part in the
debate to the end."
--Christopher Butler, University of Oxford