17356

VS-Periods - Genres - Concepts: Nineteenth-Century Realism: Theory and Practice

Stephan Karschay

Kommentar

The term ‘realism’ refers to style of representation characterized by a particular set of conventions, all of which aim at the verisimilitude (‘resemblance to reality’, ‘appearance of truth’) of the artistic work. These conventions of realist aesthetics in literature include, among other things, a richly detailed depicted world, the logical plausibility of plot and action, the complex psychology of the characters, as well as the intellectual reflection on the scientific and material conditions of empirical reality. At the same time, Realism also refers to the dominant literary epoch of the nineteenth century, whose literature was shaped by these very writing conventions. However, the term ‘realism’ often glosses over significant and subtle differences between the national forms of Realism in France, England, America, Russia, and Germany. In this seminar, we will focus on realism as a general aesthetics and an epistemological programme, and then move on to illuminate English realism in the 19th century (which, unlike French or German – ‘bourgeois’ or ‘poetic’ – realism, is less often at the centre of literary-historical discussion). In addition to important voices of English realism (e.g. George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope), we will engage with concepts that are central to any debate on realism (such as ‘mimesis’ and Roland Barthes’ ‘reality effect’) and can help distinguish realism from its later, more intensified form – naturalism.

Voraussetzungen

Erfolgreiche Absolvierung des Moduls „Surveying English Literatures“.

Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit (abhängig von Modulbelegung).

Auch die ersten Wochen der Veranstaltung zählen zur regelmäßigen Teilnahme.

Literaturhinweise

Introductory Reading

Mahler, Andreas. “Uses of ‘Realism:’ A Term in History and the History of a Term,” in Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics, ed. Jens Elze (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), pp. 29-40.

Set Texts

Earnshaw, Steven. Beginning Realism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).

Eliot, George. Adam Bede [1895]. Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics.

Moore, George. Esther Waters [1894]. Ed. Stephen Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Schließen