Description
Book SynopsisRealism seems to be everywhere, both as a trending critical term and as a revitalized aesthetic practice. This volume brings together for the first time three aspects that are pertinent for a proper understanding of realism: its 19th-century aesthetics committed to making reality into an object of serious art; the experiments with and against realism by 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, or magical realist writing; and the politics of realism, especially its ambitions to map the complex realities produced by global capitalism and climate catastrophe. This juxtaposition of aesthetics, experiments, and politics unsettles the entrenched opposition between realism and experimental literature that tends to ignore the fact that realism, by virtue of its commitment to a changing material and social world, cannot be but continuously experimenting. The innovative chapters of this book address some of the pressing questions of literary and cultural studies today, like the complex relation
Trade ReviewLiterary realism has never looked more exciting than now, thanks to timely and ambitious volumes such as this one. The collection ranges across multiple national and historical contexts to offer a substantial reassessment of the realist mode. Written with acuity and flair, the chapters in this book demonstrate that realism was more supple, experimental, and expansive than critics have tended to assume. * Benjamin Kohlmann, Professor of English Literature, University of Regensburg, Germany, and author of British Literature and the Life of Institutions: Speculative States (2021) *
Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics is an exciting addition to the recent scholarship on the aesthetic, political, and theoretical possibilities of realist writing. Following a clear and engaging introduction, the chapters cover a broad historical and geographical range and offer new insights on realism’s relationship to modernism, postmodernism, magical realism, postcoloniality, global literature, climate fiction, experimental fiction, and more. In all, the book charts an exciting course for realist studies in the new millennium. * Ulka Anjaria, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA, and author of Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form (2012) *
Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics persuades us of the renewed energy and innovation in the plurality of realism. Casting realism as an aesthetic and political strategy, the book is broad in scope and the essays reinforce the capacity for foundational and contemporary realism to be both experimental and relevant. * Maggie Bowers, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Portsmouth, UK, and author of Magic(al) Realism: The New Critical Idiom (2004) *
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Realism, Political Aesthetics, and (New) Materialism
(Jens Elze, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany) Part I. Aesthetics 1. “Uses of ‘Realism’”: A Term in History and the History of a Term
(Andreas Mahler, Free University of Berlin, Germany) 2. George Eliot’s Realisms
(Nadine Böhm-Schnitker, Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) 3. Medical Realism and the Magic of Reality: Art and Insight in Thomas Hardy’s
The Woodlanders and Émile Zola’s
Le docteur Pascal (Maren Scheurer, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) 4. Conrad on Epidemics: From
The Shadow-Line to Covid-19 (and Back)
(Nidesh Lawtoo, KU Leuven, Belgium) Part II. Experiments 5. “Should I Call It Horror?”: Reflecting Realism by Exploring Contingency in Ror Wolf’s Adventure Series
Pilzer und Pelzer (Barbara Bausch, Free University of Berlin, Germany) 6. Trawling Truth: B.S. Johnson’s Evacuation of Realist Epistemology
(André Otto, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany) 7. Cultural Realism: Reconsidering Magical Realism in Louise Erdrich's
Love Medicine (Nasrin Babakhani, Georg August University of Göttingen, Germany) 8. Narrative as Realistic Thinking
(Kai Wiegandt, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany) Part III. Politics 9. Realism for Sustainability
(Caroline Levine, Cornell University, USA) 10. Network Realism/Capitalist Realism
(Dirk Wiemann, University of Potsdam, Germany) 11. Postcolonial Realism and Rohinton Mistry’s
Family Matters (Eli Park Sorensen, Chinese University of Hong Kong) 12. Settler-Colonial Realism: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing the Frontier
(Hamish Dalley, Daemen College, USA) Notes on Contributors Index
