Realism and RomanceA short history of the novel

Precursors to the Novel13th & 14th c: Middle English romances17th c: Picaresque (e.g., Cervantes’ Don Quixote) and French romances18th c:

Satiric allegory (Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels)Diaries, personal journalsPeriodicals: newspapers, literary journalsBiographies (political, criminal)

“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it is written. The Romance, in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen.” Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance (1785)

The Rise of the NovelPrior to the use of the term “novel,” the term “romance” described any longer narrative, particularly involving adventure and love.In the 17th C, the authors of “novels” set their genre against (false) “romances” by appealing to historical truth (fact) or “poetic truth” (probability).The English novel took off in the 18th C with the growth of a “reading” upper and middle class, and became the first genre to reach a mass market, as well as the first developed equally by and for women writers and readers.

Characteristics of the Novel

The novel does not take its plot from mythology, history, legend, or previous literatureCharacters have first and last names, just as particular individuals in ordinary lifeCharacters “are set in a background of particularised time and place” “The novel’s closeness to the texture of daily experience directly depends upon its employment of a much more minutely discriminated time-scale than had previously been employed in the narrative”It produces “what purports to be an authentic account of the actual experiences of individuals”(Ian Watt, “The Rise of the Novel”)

Attitudes toward the Novel

Given its increasing popularity (and its lack of “classical” generic history), the novel faced dismissal as sentiment or sensationalism without educational or moral value.Against these charges, in the first half of the 18th C Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) claimed his fictions were “fact,” and Samuel Richardson (Pamela, Clarissa) defended his epistolary novels as moral teachings.They claimed to explore what Alexander Pope termed “the proper study of man”—that is, ourselves (our character, society, morality)—through a rigorous attempt at verisimilitude.

Attitudes cont.Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, 1749) was the first defend the novel for what it was: fiction!So did literary critic Samuel Johnson (1750), though he still rejected “romances” as false and upheld the moral potential of virtuous fiction:“The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employed; as a diamond, though it cannot be made, may be polished by art.”

RealismThe Realistic Novel:

Takes a group of people and sets them going about the business of life. We come to see these people in their real complexity of temperament and motive. They are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past. Character is more important than action and plot, and probably the tragic or comic actions of the narrative will have the primary purpose of enhancing our knowledge of and feeling for an important character, a group of characters, or a way of life. The events that occur will usually be plausible, given the circumstances, and if the novelist includes a violent or sensational occurrence in his plot, he will introduce it only into such scenes as have been (in the words of Percy Lubbock) "already prepared to vouch for it.”

(Richard Chase, “The American Novel and it’s Tradition”)

RomanceThe Romance Novel:

Tends to prefer action to character, and action will be freer in a romance than in a novel, encountering, as it were, less resistance from reality. The romance can flourish without providing much intricacy of relation. The characters, probably rather two-dimensional types, will not be complexly related to each other or to society or to the past. Character itself becomes, then, somewhat abstract and ideal, so much so in some romances that it seems to be merely a function of plot. Plot: Astonishing events may occur, and these are likely to have a symbolic or ideological, rather than a realistic, plausibility. Being less committed to the immediate rendition of reality than the novel, the romance will more freely veer toward mythic, allegorical, and symbolistic forms.

“Realism” or “Romance” can be used

to designate:1. A period (historical)2. Content (new material/ topics)3. Techniques (conventions of realism or romance)4. A worldview to which an author/ narrator/ character ascribes

Romance…

Romance as a GenreA form of escapismFantasy, imagination, symbolismRecalls times of the past or unseen distant futuresA fascination with the unknown or imagined experience

Common Themes in Romance

Abandoned, orphaned, illegitimate childrenSearch for identity, innate worthHeroic battles, questsElements of the fantastic or supernatural: non-human figuresUntoward behaviors: abduction, incest, suicide, deathReligion: piety, penitenceHappy resolution

Realism as a GenreFormal Realism: a set of literary conventions used to create an illusion of empirical (what we know via our senses) reality

Psychological R.: creating the illusion of a perception of reality (of a mind trying to understand the world); related to impressionism

Moral R.: perception of the dangers of the “moral life” itself; intentions vs. consequences.

A Final ComparisonRomance

“scene and incidents are very remote from those of ordinary life”Ruled by fantasy, the imaginationOptimistic: obstacles can be overcomeEscapist: offers idealized escape from day-to-day living

Realism

“renders the precise details of the real thing or scene”Ruled by reasonPessimistic: failures expectedConfrontational: stresses the concrete and logical

So, what are we reading?