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A modern odyssey: Realism, the masses, and nationalism in George Eliot's Felix Holt

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From: Novel
Date: 19961001
Author:Lesjak, Carolyn

The industrial novel occupies a unique place in the context of debates about realism. As Erich Auerbach suggests, the subject matter of the realist novel-the masses or "the common people"-comes into being as a serious subject for literature as part of realism's inexorable logic:

Realism had to embrace the whole reality of contemporary civilization, in which to be sure the bourgeoisie played a dominant role, but in which the masses were beginning to press threateningly ahead as they became ever more conscious of their own function and power. The common people in all its ramifications had to ...

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