Documents of Modern Literary Realism

✍ Scribed by George Joseph Becker (editor)

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 620
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library; 1860
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Using selections by American, British, French, German, Russian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Portuguese, and South American critics and authors, Professor Becker illustrates how realism arose as a reaction to romanticism, and how the practitioners of realism developed conflicting ideas about the means they should use and the ends toward which they should strive. The selections are concerned mainly with prose, since, according to the author, prose fiction has been the major vehicle of realism.

Originally published in 1963.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
Introduction
Part One. The Impulse toward Realism
On Realistic Poetry
"Life and Aesthetics"
"On Realism"
On Realism
Two Views of of Madame Bovary
"The World of Balzac"
On Realism
On True Novels
On Realism
"Ideals and Idealists"
On Truth in Fiction
On Veritism
Contemporary Society as Novelistic Material
"True Art Speaks Plainly"
Part Two. The Battle Over Naturalism
On the Rougon-Macquart Series
"The Experimental Novel"
"Naturalism in the Theatre"
"Emile Zola and L'Assommoir"
"Nana"
Levels of Realism
"The Lower Elements"
"For and Against Zola"
On Spanish Realism
What Naturalism Is Not
"The New Naturalism"
"A Typical Novel"
On Russian and French Realism
"Manifesto of Five Against La Terre"
Pernicious Literature
"The Limits of Realism in Fiction"
Naturalism in the Theatre
Naturalism Is Not Dead
"Guy de Maupassant"
Part Three. Twentieth Century Revisions and Evaluations
"A Natural History of American Naturalism"
"The Naturalism of Mr. Dreiser"
"A Literary Manifesto: The Populist Novel"
On Portuguese Neo-Realism
On Socialist Realism
Comments on Socialist Realism
"A Defense of Realism"
"Emile Zola"
"A Defense of Naturalism"
On the Falsity of Realism
"Conclusions and Applications"
"Notes on the Decline of Naturalism"
"The Realistic Fallacy"
A Short Bibliography of History and Criticism
Index