Ching-Chia Ting: Literary realism

Literary realism (week 16)

Literary realism is part of the realist art movement beginning with mid nineteenth-century French

literature (Stendhal), and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin) and extending to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.In contrast to idealism, attempts to represent familiar things as they are.

Realist works of art may emphasize the ugly or sordid, such as works of social realism, regionalism, or Kitchen sink realism.In the late 18th-century Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the previous Age of Reason and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature found in the dominant philosophy of the 18th century, as well as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution.It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, educationand the natural sciences.

Social realism
is an international art movement that includes the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the genre.

Socialist realism

is the official Soviet art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and was later adopted by allied Communist parties worldwide.This form of realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress.

Naturalism

was a literary movement or tendency from the 1880s to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was a mainly unorganized literary movement that sought to depict believable everyday reality.

American realism

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the literature of the United States. His stories of middle and upper class life set in the 1880s and 1890s are highly regarded among scholars of American fiction. His most popular novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885).

Initiation

a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components.
include Hindu diksha, Christian baptism or confirmation, Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a fraternal organization, secret society or religious order, or graduation from school or recruit training. A person taking the initiation ceremony in traditional rites, such as those depicted in these pictures, is called an initiate.

Quest

serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction: a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Tales of quests figure prominently in the folklore of every nationand ethnic culture.

In literature, the object of a quest requires great exertion on the part of the hero, who must overcome many obstacles, typically including much travel.

Journey

Bildungsroman

novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story . is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is extremely important.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived.