Theme: critical realism in english literature of the XIX

United States[edit]

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the literature of the United States.^[43] His stories of middle and upper class life set in the 1880s and 1890s are highly regarded among scholars of American fiction.^{[citation needed]} His most popular novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), depicts a man who, ironically, falls from materialistic fortune by his own mistakes. Other early American realists include Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn⁵ (1884),^[44][45] Stephen Crane (1871–1900), and Horatio Alger Jr. (1832–1899).
Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm. For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Crane was primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Crane saw life at its rawest, in slums and on battlefields. His haunting Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died, at 28, having neglected his health. He has enjoyed continued success ever since—as a champion of the common man, a realist, and a symbolist. Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets⁶ (1893), is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novel. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love, and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive but soon dies. Crane's earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark Maggie as a naturalist work.^[46] Horatio Alger Jr. was a prolific 19th-century American author whose principal output was formulaic rags-to-riches juvenile novels that followed the adventures of bootblacks, newsboys, peddlers, buskers, and other impoverished children in their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of respectable middle-class security and comfort. His novels, of which Ragged Dick is a typical example, were hugely popular in their day.

Europe

Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish writer from the Canary Islands
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) is the most prominent representative of 19th-century realism in fiction through the inclusion of specific detail and recurring characters.^[47][48][49] His La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction—nothing less than a complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism is also an important aspect of the works of Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895).
Many of the novels in this period, including Balzac's, were published in newspapers in serial form, and the immensely popular realist "roman feuilleton" tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life (crime, police spies, criminal slang), as in the novels of Eugène Sue. Similar tendencies appeared in the theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the Grand Guignol at the end of the century.
Gustave Flaubert's (1821–1880) acclaimed novels Madame Bovary (1857), which reveals the tragic consequences of romanticism on the wife of a provincial doctor, and Sentimental Education (1869) represent perhaps the highest stages in the development of French realism. Flaubert also wrote other works in an entirely different style and his romanticism is apparent in the fantastic The Temptation of Saint Anthony (final version published 1874) and the baroque and exotic scenes of ancient Carthage in Salammbô (1862).
In German literature, 19th-century realism developed under the name of "Poetic Realism" or "Bourgeois Realism," and major figures include Theodor Fontane, Gustav Freytag, Gottfried Keller, Wilhelm Raabe, Adalbert Stifter, and Theodor Storm.^[50]
In Italian literature, the realism genre developed a detached description of the social and economic conditions of people in their time and environment. Major figures of Italian Verismo include Luigi Capuana, Giovanni Verga, Federico De Roberto, Matilde Serao, Salvatore Di Giacomo, and Grazia Deledda, who in 1926 received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Later realist writers included Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Benito Pérez Galdós, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Machado de Assis, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bolesław Prus and, in a sense, Émile Zola, whose naturalism is often regarded as an offshoot of realism.
Critics of realism cite that depicting reality is not often realistic with some observers calling it "imaginary" or "project".^[53] This argument is based on the idea that we do not often get what is real correctly. To present reality, we draw on what is "real" according to how we remember it as well as how we experience it. However, remembered or experienced reality does not always correspond to what the truth is. Instead, we often obtain a distorted version of it that is only related to what is out there or how things really are. Realism is criticized for its supposed inability to address this challenge and such failure is seen as tantamount to complicity in a creating a process wherein "the artefactual nature of reality is overlooked or even concealed."^[54] According to Catherine Gallagher, realistic fiction invariably undermines, in practice, the ideology it purports to exemplify because if appearances were as self-sufficient, there would probably be no need for novels.^[53] This can be demonstrated in the literary naturalism's focus during late-nineteenth-century America on the larger forces that determine the lives of its character as depicted in agricultural machines portrayed as immense and terrible, shredding "entangled" human bodies without compunction.^[55] The machines were used as a metaphor but it contributed to the perception that such narratives were more like myth than reality.^[55]
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal), and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin).[1] Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences.
The 19th century was characterized by sharp contradictions. In many ways it was an age of progress: railways and ships were built, great scientific discoveries were made, education became more widespread; but al the same time it was an age of profound social unrest, because there was too much poverty, too much injustice. The growth of scientific inventions mechanized industry and increased wealth, but this progress only enriched the few at the expense of the many. Dirty factories, long hours of work, child labour, exploitation, low wages, slums and frequent unemployment -these were the conditions of life for the workers in the growing industries of England, which became the richest country in the world towards the middle of the 19th century.
By the thirties of the 19th century English capitalism had entered a new stage of development. England had become a classical capitalist country, a country of industrial capitalism. The Industrial Revolution gathered force as the 19th century progressed, and profound changes in hand-looms gave way, within a hundred years, to factory towns, railroads, and steamships. The population of Manchester, Birmingham and other industrial centres was growing rapidly as the number of factory workers increased, while the number of poor farmers decreased and many rural districts were depopulated. The basic social classes in England were no longer the peasants and the landlords but the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Having won the victory over aristocracy, the bourgeoisie betrayed the interests of the working class. The workers fought for their rights. Their political demands were expressed in the People's Charier in 1833. The Chartis Movement was a revolutionary movement of the English workers, which lasted till 1848.
The Chartists introduced their own literature, which was the first attempt to create a literature of the working class. The Chartist writers tried their hand at different genres. They wrote articles, short stories, songs, epigrams, poems. Their leading genre was poetry.
The ideas of the Chartism attracted the attention of many progressive-minded people of that time. A lot of prominent writers became aware of the social injustices around them and tried to depict them in their works. Thus this period was mirrored in literature by the appearance of a new trend, the Critical Realism. The greatest novelists of the age are Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell.
These writers used the novel as a means to protest against the evils in contemporary social and economic life and to picture the world in a realistic way. Their greatness also lies in their profound humanism. Their sympathy lies with the ordinary people. They believed in the good qualities of the human heart.
a trend, or method, in realistic literature and art in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gorky, who used the expression “critical realism” in 1934 to describe the stress on expose in realistic literature of the 19th century. ...
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. ... The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work.
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution.[1] Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of all classes in situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world.[citation needed] The popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction of photography—a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (1872), Tate Britain, London, England
The Realists depicted everyday subjects and situations in contemporary settings, and attempted to depict individuals of all social classes in a similar manner. Gloomy earth toned palettes were used to ignore beauty and idealization that was typically found in art. This movement sparked controversy because it purposefully criticized social values and the upper classes, as well as examining the new values that came along with the industrial revolution. Realism is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern art movement due to the push to incorporate modern life and art together.[2] Classical idealism and Romantic emotionalism and drama were avoided equally, and often sordid or untidy elements of subjects were not smoothed over or omitted. Social realism emphasizes the depiction of the working class, and treating them with the same seriousness as other classes in art, but realism, as the avoidance of artificiality, in the treatment of human relations and emotions was also an aim of Realism. Treatments of subjects in a heroic or sentimental manner were equally rejected.[3]
Realism as an art movement was led by Gustave Courbet in France. It spread across Europe and was influential for the rest of the century and beyond, but as it became adopted into the mainstream of painting it becomes less common and useful as a term to define artistic style. After the arrival of Impressionism and later movements which downgraded the importance of precise illusionistic brushwork, it often came to refer simply to the use of a more traditional and tighter painting style. It has been used for a number of later movements and trends in art, some involving careful illusionistic representation, such as Photorealism, and others the depiction of "realist" subject matter in a social sense, or attempts at both.
I. HOMERIC or HEROIC PERIOD
(1200-800 BCE)

Greek legends were passed along orally, including Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is a chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders, and fierce pirates.

II. CLASSICAL GREEK PERIOD
(800-200 BCE)
Greek writers, playwrights, and philosophers include Gorgias, Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. The fifth century (499-400 BCE) in particular is renowned as The Golden Age of Greece. This was the sophisticated era of the polis, or individual City-State, and early democracy. Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, and philosophy originated in Athens.
Statue of Julius Caesar
III. CLASSICAL ROMAN PERIOD
(200 BCE-455 CE)
Greece's culture gave way to Roman power when Rome conquered Greece in 146 CE. The Roman Republic was traditionally founded in 509 BCE, but it was limited in size until later. Playwrights of this time include Plautus and Terence. After nearly 500 years as a Republic, Rome slid into a dictatorship under Julius Caesar and finally into a monarchial empire under Caesar Augustus in 27 CE. This later period is known as the Roman Imperial period. Roman writers include Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. Roman philosophers include Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius. Roman rhetoricians include Cicero and Quintilian.
The Confessions of Saint AugustineIV. PATRISTIC PERIOD
(c. 70 CE-455 CE)
Early Christian writers include Saint Augustine, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome. This is the period when Saint Jerome first compiled the Bible, Christianity spread across Europe, and the Roman Empire suffered its dying convulsions. In this period, barbarians attacked Rome in 410 CE, and the city finally fell to them completely in 455 CE.
The Renaissance took place in the late 15th, 16th, and early 17th century in Britain, but somewhat earlier in Italy and southern Europe and somewhat later in northern Europe.)
I. Early Tudor Period
(1485-1558)
Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene
The War of the Roses ended in England with Henry Tudor (Henry VII) claiming the throne. Martin Luther's split with Rome marks the emergence of Protestantism, followed by Henry VIII's Anglican schism, which created the first Protestant church in England. Edmund Spenser is a sample poet.
II. Elizabethan Period
(1558-1603)William Shakespeare

Queen Elizabeth saved England from both Spanish invasion and internal squabbles at home. Her reign is marked by the early works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Sidney.

III. Jacobean Period
(1603-1625)
Shakespeare's later work include Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, and John Donne.
John Milton's Paradise LostIV. Caroline Age
(1625-1649)
John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the "Sons of Ben" and others wrote during the reign of Charles I and his Cavaliers.
V. Commonwealth Period/Puritan Interregnum
(1649-1660)
Under Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship, John Milton⁷ continued to write, but we also find writers like Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Browne.