REALISM IN LITERATURE

Introduction

Believers in realism were convinced that there was a need to portray life and reality as objectively as possible in the arts and in literature. This was

especially emphasized by many writers of the industrialrevolution. Yet, its not an original concept that is distinct to the Industrial Revolution. The term realism was originally used by the thirteenth-century scholastics as meaning a belief in the reality of ideas; it was contrasted with nominalism which supported the doctrine that ideas are only names or abstractions. In the eighteenth century its meaning was practically reversed; in Thomas Reid, in Kant, and in Schelling realism means the opposite of idealism. As a literary term, realism occurs first in a letter of Friedrich Schiller to Goethe (April 27, 1798) asserting that realism cannot make a poet (Wellek). In its methods and attitudes, realism may be found as an element in many kinds of writing prior to the 19th century (e.g. in Chaucer or Defoe, in their different ways); but as a dominant literary trend it is associated chiefly with the 19thcentury novel of middle or lowerclass life, in which the problems of ordinary people in unremarkable circumstances are rendered with close attention to the details of physical setting and to the complexities of social life (Answers). The last quote is quite notable in the sense that novels were the primary medium of its advocates as Romanticism was notable for the lyrical poetry that is appreciated until now.

Realism and Its Progression

The most commonly accepted elaboration of the definition of realism would be that of Howells. Dewitt, etal.,explained that Howells statement indicates that a belief in the possibility of realism implies a belief in an objective reality. Realism can be both material and psychological. It uses words to depict the way that things look and feel and the way that people act. Realists believe in unexpected ways. Wishing to exclude nothing, realistic writers pay much

attention to detail, especially more sordid or shocking aspects of human life (Witt, Brown and Dunbar). If sticking objectively to reality is the chief tenet of realism, then some nineteenth-century realists may not be realists since they revealed their personalconvictions on contemporary social issues. The rise of the industrial cities and its drastic effect on human life was considered to be an appropriate subject by socially concerned realists. Charles Dickens opened to us a window of the Industrial revolution when his characters traversed the streets of London, worked in bottle factories, and landed in debtors prison. Witt and company do not consider Dickens as a consistently realist writer perhaps because of the Horatio Alger-like endings of his more famous novels. Still, they contended that he does to a great extent reproduce the material, social, and psychological environment of his time which was the fact that misery was prevailing in almost all aspects of life of the working masses. The same economic transformation ushered the

increase of the literacy of the high and middle classes. Aside from increasing the size of the reading public, realist writers and their publishers facilitated widespread access through making novels serialized in publications and

journals. This is comparable to the many soap operas that cluttered todays TV primetime slots. People may have become tired of the lofty tendencies of the romanticists and idealists writers of the Romantic Period and sought characters, events, and stories that they can identify with. There is widespread agreement that Realism flowered in its fullest in France. Its precursors are identified as Merimee, Stendhal, Balzac, Monnier, and Charles Bernard. Champlfeury and later Flaubert, the Goncourts, and the

younger Dumas were the exponents of the school. Flaubert did not recognize the designation. Flaubert in his series of novels entitled The Human Comedy (obviously in contrast to The Divine Comedy), portrayed comprehensively French society in his time which resulted to characters that are realistic and memorable. Realism in the United States began later than in Europe, but it had considerable impact on American fictionthat continues to the present day. Henry James studied the French realists for his own benefit; William

Dean Howells wrote against the romantic lies in literature in favor of realism, which portrays men and women as they actually are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know. Stephen Crane, who portrayed the harsher aspects of the Civil Was, was another great American realist. In England, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and William Makepeace Thackeray were the primary realist writers. Thackeray was called, rather casually, chief of the Realist school in 1851. George Henry Lewes was the first English critic who systematically applied standards of realism, for instance, in a severe review, Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction (1858). There Lewes boldly proclaims ... Realism the basis of all Art. (Answers).

French realism subsequently developed into naturalism, an associated but more scientifically applied and Elaborated doctrine, seen by some later critics (notably *Marxist critics) as degenerate. In England, the French realists were imitated

consciously and notably by Moore and Arnold *Bennett, but the English novel from the time of *Defoe had had its own unlabelled strain of realism, and the term is thus applied to English literature in varying senses and contexts, sometimes qualified as 'social' or 'psychological' realism etc. (Drabble).

Realism as with all trends is not spared from critics. It has many enemies and some are rabid at heart. Realism was judged negatively for reasons that

included, excessive use of minute external detail, abandonment of what is ideal and the impersonality and objectivity of the writer who are considered to be immoral and cynics. According to Wellek, the much vaunted trial of Flaubert in 1857 for Madame Bovary was completely established realism as term in France.

Conclusion

Literature responds to the needs of the times. It not only provides a recreational outlet from the rigors of life but seeks resolution of contemporary issues. Idealism, Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism in literature were apt responses in their particular time periods. Both Idealism and Romanticism

provided a venue for classical ideals to be highlighted and strived for as part of the Renaissance continuum. Realism and Naturalism are reality checks for

society: what we are looking through the mirror is true. The question then will be, what do we do now?

Works Cited
Answers. "Literary:Realism." www.answers.com. Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000. Fletcher, Robert Huntington. A History of English Literature. Easy Software Products, 2002. Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Wellek, Rene. "Realism in Literature." 1 May 2003. Dictionary of the History of Ideas. 25 February 2009. Witt, Mary Ann Frese, et al. The Humanities. Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 2002.