Nineteenth-Century Literary Realism
Through the Looking Glass

A challenging rethinking of traditional theories, and redefinition of the genre, of realism.

Katherine Kearns (Author)

9780521152723, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 August 2010

322 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

"...it is certainly a lively read and worthy of consideration by any hardy enough to venture into the quagmire of studies on realism." Joseph W. Childers

Nineteenth-Century Literary Realism argues for realism as a genre committed to depicting the imperilled ecological system of soul and society. More specifically: realism, Kearns argues, suggests to its readers that social and political and economic reforms are inextricably tied to spiritual well being. In the process of trying to communicate that suggestion, realism enters into a kind of considerate conversation with its readers which - through the slippage endemic to language - rapidly works to destabilise, even undermine, its own assumptions. Thus realism, in addition to bearing the burden of its own reformist agenda and the duty of character-enactment within a restricted environment, is charged with an alternative energy which can be seen at the same time to disrupt and to enrich its generic, formal bounds. She explores these concepts through five British and American novels - Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, The Blithedale Romance, Hard Times and The Awakening.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Real realism
2. Talking about things
3. Domestic violence
4. The inhuman
5. Brontë's variations on a theme by Sade
6. A tropology of realism in Hard Times
7. 'Zenobia in chains'
8. Dreams of sleep
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]