Realism in European Literature
Essays in Honour of J. P. Stern

This 1986 collection addresses fundamental issues of literary realism that have long been given prominence by J. P. Stern.

Nicholas Boyle (Edited by), Martin Swales (Edited by)

9780521155335, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 November 2010

220 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.29 kg

The essays in this collection, which was originally published in 1986, address fundamental issues of literary realism that have long been given prominence by J. P. Stern, the distinguished writer on German literature and author of the seminal study On Realism. In the prevailing theoretical climate problems associated with literary realism assumed great urgency. Such problems are the notion of literary 'truth to life', the survival of the concept of 'realism' in the light of modern hermeneutical theory, the perspective adopted by the contemporaries of Barthes and inheritors of Nietzsche on the canonical prose writers of the nineteenth century, and the future for an exegetical tradition represented in the work of Erich Auerbach.

Foreword
Note on the text
1. Notes on language, its deconstruction and on translating Erich Heller
2. Significant objects: a possibility of realism in early narratives Wolfgang Harms
3. 'Enter Mariners, wet': realism in Shakespeare's last plays Anne Barton
4. Language and reality in Bleak House Graham Hough
5. The problem of nineteenth-century German realism Martin Swales
6. Proust's Balzac Sheila Stern
7. Realism, modernism, and 'language-consciousness' Stephen Health
8. Nietzche and the 'middle mode of discourse' Nicholas Boyle
9. Fabricating histories Paul Connerton
10. Ounces of example: Henry James, philosopher Renford Bambrough
11. Afterthoughts on realism Richard Brinkmann
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]