Literary realism

Literary realism is a movement and a genre of literature. It seeks to represent mundane and ordinary subject matter in a faithful way. This style avoids grandiose or exotic topics. It also avoids exaggerated portrayals and speculative elements. These elements include supernatural events or alternative worlds. Realism encompasses both fiction and nonfiction writing. It is a subset of the broader realist art movement. This movement began with mid-nineteenth-century French and Russian literature. The goal is to represent familiar things as they truly are. This includes everyday activities and common human experiences.

To achieve this, artists follow a specific mechanism of representation. They aim to reproduce what is called "objective reality." This means depicting subjects in a third-person perspective. They do this without embellishment or personal interpretation. The approach follows secular and empirical rules. Everything in the work must be explicable through natural causation. This excludes any resort to supernatural or divine intervention. Some artists even adopt scientific methods to understand their subjects. They use the precision of the scientific method to study social and moral phenomena. This creates a sense of truthfulness and accuracy in the work.

Realism emerged as a reaction against Romanticism. Romanticism had dominated art and literature since the late 18th century. It focused on wild emotions and grand, idealistic ideas. Realist painters and writers rejected these romanticized views. In France, the realism movement in painting began in the 1850s. This followed the Revolution of 1848. Literary realism was also a post-1848 phenomenon. The first theorist of the movement was Jules-Français Champfleury. Realism focuses on the middle- or lower-class society. It shows their quotidian, or everyday, activities without dramatization.

There are several distinct types of realism. Social realism is an international movement. It uses painters, photographers, and filmmakers to show the conditions of the working class. These artists are often critical of social structures. A specific British version is called kitchen sink realism. This developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It focuses on working-class Britons in cramped, rented homes. These stories often feature "angry young men" in industrial areas. They use the rough accents and slang of those regions. Examples include the play Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.

Another important type is naturalism, which lasted from the 1880s to 1930s. Naturalism is an outgrowth of literary realism. It was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. While realism describes subjects as they are, naturalism goes deeper. It tries to determine the scientific forces shaping human character. These forces include heredity and the environment. Naturalistic works often focus on darker themes. These can include poverty, disease, and corruption. In Italy, a movement called verismo emerged. Derived from the Italian word for "true," it focused on disadvantaged people. Authors like Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana led this movement.

A very specific form was socialist realism in the Soviet Union. This was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934. It was the official art form for the Soviet Union. This style required artists to glorify the struggle of the proletariat. The proletariat refers to the working class. The movement aimed for the ideological transformation of workers. It demanded a truthful, historically concrete representation of reality. However, scholars find this framework difficult to reconcile. It is hard to depict the world as it is while also showing it as it "should be." This tension existed until the limits expanded after Stalin's death.

The significance of realism lies in its connection to human perception. Critic Ian Watt noted that modern realism begins with a specific position. This position holds that truth can be discovered through the senses. This idea has roots in the philosophies of Descartes and Locke. It received its first full formulation from Thomas Reid in the mid-18th century. Realism also relates to the rise of modernism. Around 1900, modernist literature began to revolt against realism. Modernists criticized the 19th-century bourgeois social order. They moved toward an antirealist and antirationalist program. This shows how realism helped shape the history of modern thought.