Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Poor old realism. Out of date and second-rate. Squashed in between the freshness of romanticism and the newness of modernism, it is truly the tasteless spam in the sandwich of literary and cultural history. Compared with other long-established members of the cast of critical players, it has recently been having a really bad press. First, in the sad sense that no one has been arguing about it. The number of critical books on realism from the past couple of decades can be counted on the fingers of one hand; but try doing that with the stars that come before and after it: romanticism still gets a high billing, as it has for some while, but modernist studies, in particular, have expanded far beyond the capacities of any individual bookshelf, leaving realism behind as their dingy Victorian relation, moldering in an unilluminated corner. The corollary of this no-press bad press is the more obvious kind. For secondly, when realism does get mentioned it is usually in the form of a passing, knee-jerk dismissal of it as something self-evidently without interest, not to say a bit dumb. Realism normally comes stuck with one of a set menu of regular adjectival accompaniments, and whether it's gritty, or vulgar, or kitchen-sink, or photographic, the standard formulations reinforce the way it is seen as itself formulaic, something we already know about and need have no interest in exploring: it ... log in or subscribe to read full text