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realism

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From: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Date: 20070301
Author:

In literature, the theory or practice of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization of everyday life. The 18th-century works of Daniel Defoe , Henry Fielding , and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic program in France in the mid-19th century, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society; Gustave Flaubert 's Madame Bovary (1857) established the movement in European literature. The realist emphasis on detachment and ...

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