PRESENTED BY: SHEERAZ HUSSAIN SHAIKH

SUBJECT: LITERARY MOVEMENTS

CONCERNED TEACHER: ADNAN MAGSI
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
@MOHTARMA BENAZIR BHUTTO SHAHEED CAMPUS
DADU, UNIVERSITY OF SINDH.
 The quality or fact of representing a person
or thing in a way that is accurate and true to
life. (Oxford Dictionary)

 Realism is a movement of Art and Literature

that represents reality by portraying
mundane, everyday experiences as they are
in real life. It depicts familiar people, places,
and stories, primarily about the middle and
lower classes of society. Literary realism
seeks to tell a story as truthfully as possible
instead of dramatizing or romanticizing it.
Background:

 Literary Realism started in France in 19th Century and lasted

until the early 20th Century (1865 - 1915).
 It began as a reaction to 18th Century Romanticism and
Capitalism in Europe. Works of Romanticism were thought to
be too exotic (unusual, foreign, alien and thought to have lost
touch with the real.
 The realist movement in literature was first inspired by the
paintings of the French artist Gustave Coubert.
 Later, the realist French writers published works of realism in
novels and in serial form in newspapers. The earliest realist
writers include Honore de Balzac, who wrote about complex
characters and detailed observations about society, and
“Gustave Flaubert” who established realist narration as we
know it today.
 In England the Realism coincides
approximately with the “Victorian Era” a
period ruled by Queen Victoria (1837- 1901)
which meant the height of the British Empire
and Industrial Revolution. The United
Kingdom at that time expanded it borders
into America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania and
became the first economic and political
world power.
 Once the realism took shape, George Elliot
published Middle March: A study of
Provincial Life in 1871, which is considered
the most famous work of realism to come
from England.
 Characteristics of Realism:
 Realism perceived the individual simply as a person.
This was contradictory to Romanticism and the
naturalism because the romantics idealized the
human being. They saw him as god. On the other
hand naturalists saw the individual as a helpless
being; as a victim of all the elements that surrounded
him.
 Objective writing about ordinary characters in
ordinary situations; “ real life”
 Describes reality in comprehensive detail.

 Character is more important than action and plot;

complex ethical choices are often the subject.
 Social class is important (usually describes the middle
class)
 Diction is vernacular (language spoken by ordinary
people)- not heightened or poetic.

 Tone can be comic, satiric, or matter of fact tone.

 Relations between people and society are explored.

 Purpose of writing was to instruct and entertain.

 The use of images was extended, Symbolism and

allegory was controlled and limited.
Themes
 Realism genre is probably the most popular genre, compared to
other genres before and after the Victorian Era.
 Class Conflict
 One of the major themes addressed by realist writers is
socioeconomic class conflict. Many realist writers, in their efforts to
depict characters from all levels of society, highlighted differences
between the rich and the poor.
 As; In David Copperfield, by Dickens, the protagonist experiences
the suffering of penniless children forced to work in urban
factories.

 The City
 Charles Dickens set much of his fiction in London, describing
specific streets, buildings, and neighborhoods in his novels.
 Marriage and the Family
 Realist novelists often focused on the dynamics of
marriage and family life in different sectors of society.
Extramarital affairs are the subject of such major works of
realist fiction as Flaubert's Madame Bovary (French) and
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, both novels about married
middle-class women whose affairs lead to social
catastrophe and suicide.
 Realist fiction often focuses on several sets of families or
couples within a single novel. Anna Karenina and War
and Peace focus on three families.
 Eliot's Middlemarch also focuses on the family and marital
dynamics within several different households.
Representative Authors and
Works:

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

 Honoréde Balzac is recognized as the originator of French Realism in
literature and one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth
century.
 His life's work comprises a series of some ninety novels and novellas
collectively entitled La Comeédiehumaine (The Human Comedy).

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

 Charles Dickens is known as an early master of the English realist
novel and one of the most celebrated and most enduring novelists
of all time. Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England. After the
publication of his first novel, Pickwick Papers (1836), Dickens soon
became the most popular author in England.
 Works
 Dickens's major novels include Oliver Twist (1838),
 Nicholas Nickleby (1839),
 David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853),
 Hard Times: For These Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of
Two Cities (1859),
 Our Mutual Friend (1865).
 His Christmas story A Christmas Carol (1843) remains an ever-
enduring classic.

 The Great Expectations (1860-61) most famous realistic novel

 George Elliot (1819-1880)
 George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian)
Evans, one of the most outstanding novelists of English
Realism. She was born in Warwickshire, England, on
November 22, 1819.

 Eliot's major works include Adam Bede (1859),
 Middlemarch (1871-1872), Most Famous Work of Literary
Realism
 The Mill on the Floss (1860),
 Silas Marner (1861)
 Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
 Fyodor Dostoevsky (also spelled Dostoyevsky) is known as a major author
of Russian realist fiction and one of the greatest novelists of all time.
Dostoevsky was born , in Moscow, Russia. His first published work was a
translation from French into Russian of Balzac's novel EugénieGrandet.
Dostoevsky's original novella Bednyyelyudi (Poor Folk), published in 1846,
immediately gained the admiration of the leading Russian writers and
critics of the day.
 After serving this ten-year sentence, he went on to a successful career as
a novelist and journalist.
 Works
 Dostoevsky's greatest works include the novels
 Prestupleniye I nakazaniye (1866), translated as Crime and Punishment
 Idiot (1868); Besy (1872), translated as The Possessed;
 Dnevnikpisatelya (1873-1877), translated as The Diary of a Writer;
 and Brat'yaKaramazovy (1880), translated as The Brothers Karamazov,
 the novella Zapiskiizpodpolya (1864), translated as Notes from the
Underground.
Other Writers:
 Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

 William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

 Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) French

 His Masterpiece Story "Ball of Fat" (1880),

 Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian

 Tolstoy's greatest novels are Voiniimir (1869;War and peace)
and Anna Karenina (1877).

 Émile Zola (1840-1902) French

 Wokrs: Twenty-novel series entitled Les Rougon-Macquart(The
Rougon-Macquarts).
Types of Realism
 Magical Realism. A type of realism that blurs the lines between fantasy
and reality. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcíaMárquez (1967) is
a magical realism novel about a man who invents a town ac`cording to his own
perceptions.
 Social Realism. A type of realism that focuses on the lives and living
conditions of the working class and the poor. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
(1862) is a social novel about class and politics in France in the early 1800s.
 Kitchen Sink Realism. An offshoot of social realism that focuses on
the lives of young working-class British men who spend their free time
drinking in pubs. Room at the Top by John Braine (1957) is a kitchen sink
realist novel about a young man with big ambitions who struggles to realize his
dreams in post-war Britain.
 Socialist Realism. Introduced by Joseph Stalin and adopted by
Communists. Socialist realism glorifies the struggles of the
proletariat. Cement by Fyodor Gladkov (1925) is a socialist-realist
novel about the struggles of reconstructing the Soviet Union after the
Russian Revolution.
 Naturalism. An extreme form of realism influenced by Charles
Darwin’s theory of evolution, Naturalism, founded by Émile Zola,
explores the belief that science can explain all social and
environmental phenomena. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
(1930), a short story about a recluse with a mental illness whose fate
is already determined, is an example of naturalism.
 Psychological Realism. A type of realism that’s character-driven,
focusing on what motivates them to make certain decisions and why.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866) is a
psychological realist novel about a man who hatches a plan to kill a
man and take his money to get out of poverty—but feels immense
guilt and paranoia after he does it.