Realism is everywhere, both as a trending critical term and as a revitalized aesthetic practice. This volume brings together for the first time three aspects that are pertinent for a proper understanding of realism: its origins as a radical 19th-century aesthetic practice committed to making reality into an object of serious art; the challenges to realism taken up by experimental forms of processing reality in 20th-century literature; and the politics of contemporary realism, especially its ambitions to map the complex realities produced by global capital. This juxtaposition of origins, challenges and politics unsettles the routine division between realism and experimental literature that tends to ignore the fact that realism, by virtue of its commitment to a changing material and social world, cannot be but continuously experimenting.
The innovative chapters of this book deal with classically realist authors such as George Eliot, Émile Zola and Joseph Conrad to gauge the original radicalism of their realist projects. The contributions further investigate the experimental engagements with realism by authors such as B.S. Johnson, J.M. Coetzee or Rachel Cusk. Finally, contributions analyse the politics of realism found in contemporary global novels by writers like Chimamanda Adichie, David Mitchell or Rohinton Mistry. While the chapters of the volume have a story to tell about the development and uses of realism from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, the material and the readings assembled here are also testament to the ongoing controversies surrounding definitions and deployments of the genre.