Realism Representation And The Arts In Nineteenth Century Literature

This book confronts a significant paradox in the development of literary realism: the very novels that present themselves as purveyors and celebrants of direct, ordinary human experience also manifest an obsession with art that threatens to sabotage their Realist claims. Unlike previous studies of the role of visual art, or music, or theatre in Victorian literature, Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature examines the juxtaposition of all of these arts in the works of Charlotte Brontë, William Thackeray, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and others. Alison Byerly combines close textual analysis with discussion of relevant ancillary topics to illuminate the place of different arts within nineteenth-century British culture. Her book, which also contains sixteen illustrations, represents an effort to bridge the growing gap between aesthetics and cultural studies.

This book is about the historical moment when writers and critics first used the term “realism” to describe representation in literature and painting. While scholarship on realism tends to proceed from an assumption that the term has a long-established meaning and history, this book reveals that mid-nineteenth-century critics and writers first used the term reluctantly, with much confusion over what it might actually mean. It did not acquire the ready meaning we now take for granted until the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, its first definitions came primarily by way of example and analogy, through descriptions of current practitioners, or through fictionalized representations of artists. By investigating original debates over the term “realism,” this book shows how writers simultaneously engaged with broader concerns about the changing meanings of what was real and who had the authority to decide this.

This book examines the fairy in the work of many Victorian painters, novelists and poets.

This text explores the scope and variety of the great novels of the 19th century. The essays in this collection trace the experimentation of 19th-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction.

The essays in this volume trace the experimentation of nineteenth-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction while revitalizing the inheritance of the Gothic and the Romantic. Focusing on some of the most popular novels of the century (Northanger Abbey, Jayne Eyre, Dombey and Son, Middlemarch, Far from the Madding Crowd and Germinal), this attractive volume explores some of the recurring themes in nineteenth-century fiction: aspiration and vocation; social class; sexual politics; political reform; colonialism and commerce. This is an ideal introduction to some of the major fictional achievements of the first industrial era, and to most of the crucial themes in nineteenth-century fiction.

First published in 1970, this book provides an introduction to literary realism. After considering what realism is and its philosophical roots, it goes on to examine the emergence of the idea of realism in nineteenth-century France and its gradual spread across the wider republic of letters. This work will be of interest to those studying nineteenth-century European literature.

A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain presents 33 essays by expert scholars on all the major aspects of the political, social, economic and cultural history of Britain during the late Georgian and Victorian eras. Truly British, rather than English, in scope. Pays attention to the experiences of women as well as of men. Illustrated with maps and charts. Includes guides to further reading.

This book examines women's art writing in the nineteenth century, challenging the idea of art history as a masculine intellectual field.