A literary movement, chiefly in the novel, committed to depicting ordinary life and character with close, unsentimental observation rather than Romantic idealization or melodrama. Its major figures span several national traditions with distinct emphases: Flaubert and later Zola in France, George Eliot in England, and, in Russia, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, whose psychological depth is often treated as Realism's furthest development within the movement. Realism's insistence on the texture of everyday, often unglamorous experience marked a deliberate break from Romanticism's emphasis on the exceptional and the sublime.
Facts
Disputed
Period, From (Year)French literary history commonly dates the movement's emergence to Stendhal and Balzac beginning around 1830, but Realism arrived in different national literatures at markedly different times, English and Russian realism generally reckoned somewhat later, so no single start year holds across the whole movement. Period, To (Year)Realism does not end sharply so much as give way gradually to Naturalism and then Modernism around the turn of the twentieth century, and specific national literatures place that transition at different points, so any single boundary year is a simplification rather than a scholarly consensus. Realism
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Connections
Associated Authors
Source Eugene O'Neill (Wikipedia)
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source Mao Dun (Wikipedia)
Source Encyclopedia.com: Robinson Crusoe (Encyclopedia.com)
Source Theodor Storm (Wikipedia)
Associated With
Costumbrismo, Movements Costumbrismo's close observation of manners and customs is a recognised forerunner of Spanish and Latin American literary Realism.
Literary history relation between named movements
Literary history relation between named movements
Influenced
Lu Xun and other New Culture Movement writers drew explicitly on Western and Russian literary realism (Gogol among named influences).
Influenced By
In the Other Atlases
Originated In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Sources
1. Literary realism (Wikipedia)
Lead paragraphQuote, Lead paragraph
attempts to represent mundane and ordinary subject-matter in a faithful and straightforward way
2. The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company- Period, From (Year): from 1830
- Period, To (Year): to 1900
Eugene O'Neill (Wikipedia)
Associated Authors: Eugene O'Neill, Lead section [in-movement]Quote, Associated Authors: Eugene O'Neill, Lead section [in-movement]
His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism
Theodor Storm (Wikipedia)
Associated Authors: Theodor Storm, Work [in-movement]Quote, Associated Authors: Theodor Storm, Work [in-movement]
Storm was one of the most important authors of 19th-century German Literary realism.
Mao Dun (Wikipedia)
Associated Authors: Mao Dun, Lead, second sentenceQuote, Associated Authors: Mao Dun, Lead, second sentence
He was highly celebrated for his realist novels
Encyclopedia.com: Robinson Crusoe (Encyclopedia.com)
Encyclopedia.comAssociated Authors: Robinson Crusoe (Defoe novel), Criticism, realismQuote, Associated Authors: Robinson Crusoe (Defoe novel), Criticism, realism
Defoe's use of realism, or verisimilitude, is perhaps the most singular aspect of the work.
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