1     The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
3     Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5     This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9     It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
10     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, 1807

1     The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
3     Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5     This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9     It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
10     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, 1807

1     The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
3     Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5     This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9     It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
10     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, 1807

1     The world is too much with us; late and soon,
2     Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
3     Little we see in Nature that is ours;
4     We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
5     This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
6     The winds that will be howling at all hours,
7     And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
8     For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
9     It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
10     A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
11     So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
12     Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
13     Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
14     Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, 1807

I'm not saying a Wordsworth sonnet is an example of literary realism. It's not!

Charles Joseph Natoire, The Rebuke of Adam and Eve, 1740. Oil on copper.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Realist form

Thinking Literature 2, Week 5, Lecture 2

Natalia Cecire | n.cecire@sussex.ac.uk

these slides available at
http://natalia.cecire.org/slides/reveal-3.5.0/201903-realist-form.html

1. Literary realism is a style.

1. Literary realism is a style.
    
2. Realist style is self-effacing; by definition it attempts to disguise itself as how things really are (and therefore not a style). Some people will have you believe it’s just written any old way.

1. Literary realism is a style.
    
2. Realist style is self-effacing; by definition it attempts to disguise itself as how things really are (and therefore not a style). Some people will have you believe it’s just written any old way.
    
3. You can’t fool a Lit student. We can always detect style.

1. Literary realism is a style.

It was the display of parasols. Wide open and rounded like shields, they covered the hall from the glazed ceiling to the varnished oak mouldings. They formed festoons round the arcades of the upper storeys; they hung down in garlands along the pillars; they ran in close lines along the balustrades of the galleries, and even on the banisters of the staircases; symmetrically arranged everywnere, speckling the walls with red, green, and yellow, they seemed like great Venetian lanterns, lit for some colossal entertainment. In the corners there were complicated patterns, stars made of parasols at ninety-five centimes, and their light shades—pale blue, creamy white, soft pink—were burning with the gentleness of a night-light; while above, huge Japanese sunshades covered with golden cranes flying across a purple sky were blazing with glints of fire.

Madame Marty tried to think of a phrase to express her delight, and could only exclaim:

'It's enchanting!'

Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise [Au bonheur des dames], trans. Brian Nelson, 1883

Whether you find a scenario or description "realistic" has no bearing on whether it is realist.

Non-realist genres (e.g. romance, gothic, sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism) don't disappear with the advent of capitalist modernity. They co-exist with realism and sometimes come to depend on it.

Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny'" (1919):
Things that seem enchanted creep us out because we have painfully taught ourselves to expect disenchantment. Certain non-realist genres require realism as a backdrop or foil.

2. Realist style is self-effacing.

"markedness" (linguistics):
when a form stands out as unusual, abnormal, or noticeable in comparison to a more common standard

Example:

Realism presents its ordinary, disenchanted world in an unmarked way, as a default.

In reality, I think that the form of expression depends upon the method; that language is only one kind of logic, and its construction natural and scientific. He who writes the best will not be the one who gallops madly among hypotheses, but the one who walks straight ahead in the midst of truths. We are actually rotten with lyricism; we are very much mistaken when we think that the characteristic of a good style is a sublime confusion with just a dash of madness added; in reality, the excellence of a style depends upon its logic and clearness.

Émile Zola, "The Experimental Novel," 1879

In reality, I think that the form of expression depends upon the method; that language is only one kind of logic, and its construction natural and scientific. He who writes the best will not be the one who gallops madly among hypotheses, but the one who walks straight ahead in the midst of truths. We are actually rotten with lyricism; we are very much mistaken when we think that the characteristic of a good style is a sublime confusion with just a dash of madness added; in reality, the excellence of a style depends upon its logic and clearness.

Émile Zola, "The Experimental Novel," 1879

It was the display of parasols. Wide open and rounded like shields, they covered the hall from the glazed ceiling to the varnished oak mouldings. They formed festoons round the arcades of the upper storeys; they hung down in garlands along the pillars; they ran in close lines along the balustrades of the galleries, and even on the banisters of the staircases; symmetrically arranged everywnere, speckling the walls with red, green, and yellow, they seemed like great Venetian lanterns, lit for some colossal entertainment. In the corners there were complicated patterns, stars made of parasols at ninety-five centimes, and their light shades—pale blue, creamy white, soft pink—were burning with the gentleness of a night-light; while above, huge Japanese sunshades covered with golden cranes flying across a purple sky were blazing with glints of fire.

Madame Marty tried to think of a phrase to express her delight, and could only exclaim:

'It's enchanting!'

Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise [Au bonheur des dames], trans. Brian Nelson, 1883

It was the display of parasols. Wide open and rounded like shields, they covered the hall from the glazed ceiling to the varnished oak mouldings. They formed festoons round the arcades of the upper storeys; they hung down in garlands along the pillars; they ran in close lines along the balustrades of the galleries, and even on the banisters of the staircases; symmetrically arranged everywnere, speckling the walls with red, green, and yellow, they seemed like great Venetian lanterns, lit for some colossal entertainment. In the corners there were complicated patterns, stars made of parasols at ninety-five centimes, and their light shades—pale blue, creamy white, soft pink—were burning with the gentleness of a night-light; while above, huge Japanese sunshades covered with golden cranes flying across a purple sky were blazing with glints of fire.

Madame Marty tried to think of a phrase to express her delight, and could only exclaim:

'It's enchanting!'

Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise [Au bonheur des dames], trans. Brian Nelson, 1883

Novel: "an extended prose narrative"

(Pretty broad!)

What is often felt as the formlessness of the [realist] novel, as compared, say, with tragedy or the ode, probably follows from this: the poverty of the novel's formal conventions would seem to be the price it must pay for its realism.

Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, 1957.

3. Where to find realist style

Realism produces and effaces its style by crafting a world that looks like the status quo of capitalist modernity.

It was the display of parasols. Wide open and rounded like shields, they covered the hall from the glazed ceiling to the varnished oak mouldings. They formed festoons round the arcades of the upper storeys; they hung down in garlands along the pillars; they ran in close lines along the balustrades of the galleries, and even on the banisters of the staircases; symmetrically arranged everywnere, speckling the walls with red, green, and yellow, they seemed like great Venetian lanterns, lit for some colossal entertainment. In the corners there were complicated patterns, stars made of parasols at ninety-five centimes, and their light shades—pale blue, creamy white, soft pink—were burning with the gentleness of a night-light; while above, huge Japanese sunshades covered with golden cranes flying across a purple sky were blazing with glints of fire.

Madame Marty tried to think of a phrase to express her delight, and could only exclaim:

'It's enchanting!'

Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise [Au bonheur des dames], trans. Brian Nelson, 1883

Disclaimer!

• we're talking about a huge time period
• there are exceptions
• there are countercurrents
• there are premodern antecedents
• the period is not homogeneous
• know these narratives, but use them judiciously

1. modern time
2. modern space
3. modern subjectivity

1. modern time

"homogeneous, empty time"

Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History," trans. Harry Zohn, 1940

One of these is not like the others!

2. modern space

Modern space is homogeneous, mapped, gridded, and locatable.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899

In these works [the Waverley novels by Walter Scott], one can see how the dialectics of uneven development and the dated grid of a homogeneous empty time may be said to go hand in hand.

James Chandler, England in 1819, 1998

3. modern subjectivity

The modern subject is individual, "rounded," and characterized by interiority/psychological depth.

To her [Emma Bovary] it seemed that certain places on earth must produce happiness, like the plants that thrive in a certain soil and are stunted everywhere else. Why could she not be leaning out on the balcony of a Swiss chalet, or hiding her sadness in a cottage in Scotland, with a husband wearing a long-tailed black velvet coat, and soft boots, a pointed hat and frills on his shirt!

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Geoffrey Wall, 1857

To her [Emma Bovary] it seemed that certain places on earth must produce happiness, like the plants that thrive in a certain soil and are stunted everywhere else. Why could she not be leaning out on the balcony of a Swiss chalet, or hiding her sadness in a cottage in Scotland, with a husband wearing a long-tailed black velvet coat, and soft boots, a pointed hat and frills on his shirt!

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Geoffrey Wall, 1857

Conclusion

• Literary realism is a style that pretends not to be one.
• Realism uses literary techniques (plotting, description, characterization, narrative) to present us with worlds and characters that meet our expectations about fundamental categories of modernity: time, space, subjectivity.
• and one more thing...

Content note:
the next slide describes a novel that mentions rape and genocide.

Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death, 2011

In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways; yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. A woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape by an enemy general wanders into the desert, hoping to die. Instead, she gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different—special—she names her Onyesonwu, which means "Who fears death?" in an ancient language.

It doesn't take long for Onye to understand that she is physically and socially marked by the circumstances of her conception. She is Ewu—a child of rape who is expected to live a life of violence, a half-breed rejected by her community. But Onye is not the average Ewu. Even as a child, she manifests the beginnings of a remarkable and unique magic. As she grows, so do her abilities, and during an inadvertent visit to the spirit realm, she learns something terrifying: someone powerful is trying to kill her.

Desperate to elude her would-be murderer and to understand her own nature, she embarks on a journey in which she grapples with nature, tradition, history, true love, and the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and ultimately learns why she was given the name she bears: Who Fears Death.

The feather in my hand was smooth, delicate. I knew just where it would go. In the empty shaft on my wing. This time I was aware and in control. It wasn't like melting into a pool of something shapeless and then taking another shape. I was always something. My bones softly buckled and cracked and shrunk. It didn't hurt. My body's tissue was undulating and shifting. My mind changed focus. I was still me, but from a different perspective. I heard soft popping and sucking sounds and I smelled that rich smell that I only noticed during moments of oddness.

I flew high. My sense of touch was less, for my flesh was protected by feathers. But I saw all. My hearing was so sharp that I could hear the land breathing.

Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death, 2011

The feather in my hand was smooth, delicate. I knew just where it would go. In the empty shaft on my wing. This time I was aware and in control. It wasn't like melting into a pool of something shapeless and then taking another shape. I was always something. My bones softly buckled and cracked and shrunk. It didn't hurt. My body's tissue was undulating and shifting. My mind changed focus. I was still me, but from a different perspective. I heard soft popping and sucking sounds and I smelled that rich smell that I only noticed during moments of oddness.

I flew high. My sense of touch was less, for my flesh was protected by feathers. But I saw all. My hearing was so sharp that I could hear the land breathing.

Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death, 2011

Conclusion

• Literary realism is a style that pretends not to be one.
• Realism uses literary techniques (plotting, description, characterization, narrative, et al.) to present us with worlds and characters that meet our expectations about fundamental categories of modernity: time, space, subjectivity.
• Realist style is the foundation for many non-realist genres in the modern period.

This presentation was made using reveal.js 3.5.0, created by Hakim El Hattab / @hakimel.