In:Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectives
Edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert Weninger
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXII] 2021
► pp. 247–320
Fleeting moments and unstable spaces
Explorations of time and space in realism
Published online: 21 April 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.09lar
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.09lar
Abstract
From the end of the eighteenth and through the nineteenth century science, philosophy and socio-political
changes spawned fundamental reconfigurations of the Western experience and understanding of spatio-temporality. Challenging
writers to radically reconceptualize their understanding of time and space and to explore more fully how to do justice to the
complex new sense of spatio-temporality, this shift gave rise to a realism that developed as a creative response to modernity. The
traditional embodied involvement with an organization of time and space based on natural categories was thus faced with new
demands from a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing world and intensified European globalization. At loggerheads with the
traditional embodied forms of organizing and conceptualizing time and space, the new categories and technologies ushered in
today’s disembodied mechanical regime of social organization, worklife, transport, travel, leisure time, and class and gender
mobility, both on the private micro-level of the individual and the public macro-level of whole communities and societies.
Supported by a series of specialized case studies focussing on literatures across and beyond Europe, this chapter explores how
writers develop and deploy realist themes and techniques in order to respond to and cope with the accelerated spatio-temporal
dynamics that underpin modern life.
Article outline
- 1.The dialectic of time and space
- 2.Spatio-temporalities of realism
- 2.1Embodied and disembodied spatio-temporality
- 2.2Public and private, work and leisure: Two complementary spatio-temporal oppositions
- 3.Gendered spaces
- 3.1Inside/outside
- 3.2Home and the world
- 3.3Private and public
- 4.Global and local refractions
- 5.History and historicity
- 5.1Human agency
- 5.2Progress
- 5.2.1Social progress
- 5.2.2Cultural progress
- 5.2.3Technological progress
- 5.2.4Personal progress
- 5.3Chance and speed
- 5.3.1Chance
- 5.3.2Speed
- 5.4Stability on the edge
- 6.Details and spatial representation
- 6.1Individual agency
- 6.2Shared agency
- 6.3Anonymous agency
- 6.4Mutual agency
- 6.5Agency in the city
- 6.6Failed agency
- 7.The realist poetics of time and space
- 7.1Prose and the everyday world: Metonymy
- 7.2Everyday life: Chronotopes
- 7.2.1Dismantling the idyll
- 7.2.2Revolutionizing the salon
- 8.Beyond European realism
- 8.1Other places
- 8.2Other subjectivities
Notes Works cited
References (163)
Achebe, Chinua. 2010. Things
Fall
Apart [1958]. In The
African
Trilogy, 1–148. New York: Everyman’s Library.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. “Balzac-Lektüre.” In Noten
zur Literatur
II, 19–41. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
. 2005. The
Yacoubian Building, translated
by Humphrey Davies. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Andersen, Hans Christian. 1871. A
Poet’s Bazar: Pictures of Travel in Germany, Italy, Greece, and the
Orient, translated by Charles Beckwith. New York: Hurd and Houghton.
Aristotle. 2001. “On
Generation and
Corruption.” In The
Basic Works of Aristotle, edited
by Richard McKeon, 470–531. New York: The Modern Library.
Armstrong, Nancy. 1987. Desire
and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the
Novel. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Austen, Jane. 2008. Mansfield
Park [1814], edited
by James Kinsley. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bacon, Francis. 1994. Novum
Organum [1620], translated
by Peter Urbach and John Gibson. Chicago: Open Court.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1998. “Forms
of Time and of the Chronotope in the
Novel.” In The Dialogic
Imagination, edited and translated
by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Balzac, Honoré de. 1965–1966. La
Comédie
Humaine, 7 vols [1842–1850], edited
by Pierre Citron and Pierre-Georges Castex. Paris: Seuil.
. 1974. Ferragus [1833]. In History
of the Thirteen, translated by Herbert J. Hunt, 29–154. London: Penguin.
. 1977. Facino
Cane [1836]. In Selected
Short Stories, translated by Sylvia Raphael, 235–248. London: Penguin.
. 2020. “Author’s
Introduction [1842],” anonymous
translator. In The Human
Comedy: Introductions and
Appendix, 41–52. Milton Keynes: Dodo Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction” [1935]. In Illuminations, edited
by Hannah Arendt, 217–51. New York: Schocken.
Berger Hochstrasser, Julie. 2007. Still
Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bergson, Henri. 1991. Matter
and Memory, translated by Nancy Paul and Scott Palmer. New York: Zone Books.
Bernheimer, Charles. 1997. Figures
of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century
France. Durham, SC, and London: Duke University Press.
Breidert, Wolfgang (ed.). 1994. Die
Erschütterung der vollkommenen Welt: Die Wirkung des Erdbebens von Lissabon im
Spiegel europäischer
Zeitgenossen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Büchner, Georg. 2006. Dantons
Tod [1835]. In Georg Büchner, Sämtliche
Werke, Briefe und
Dokumente [1992; reprint 2006], vol. 1, edited
by Henri Poschmann with Rosemarie Poschmann, 11–90. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
. 2008. Danton’s
Death, Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck, translated
by Victor Price. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burger, Thomas. 1986. Max
Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation: History, Laws, and Ideal
Types. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Cardwell, Donald. 2001. Wheels,
Clocks, and Rockets: A History of
Technology [1995]. New York: Norton.
Casey, Edward S. 2009. Getting
Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the
Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Certeau, Michel de. 1988. The
Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Cohen, Margaret, and Christopher Prendergast (eds). 1995. Spectacles
of Realism: Gender, Body, Genre. University of Minnesota Press.
Crane, Stephen. 1968. Maggie:
A Girl from the
Streets [1893]. In Great
Short Works of Stephen
Crane, 127–89. New York: Harper and Row.
Dickens, Charles. 1920. A
Christmas Carol in Prose: A Ghost Story of
Christmas [1843]. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.
. 1995. Diderot
on Art 2: The Salon of 1767, translated
by John Goodman. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Döblin, Alfred. 2014. Berlin
Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte vom Franz
Biberkopf [1929]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Dohr-van Rossum, Gerhard. 1996. History
of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal
Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Eikhenbaum, Boris. 1981. Lermontov [1924], edited
and translated by R. Parrott and H. Weber. Ann Arbor: Artis.
Ferguson, Moira. 1991. “Mansfield
Park: Slavery, Colonialism, and Gender.” Oxford
Literary
Review 13: 118–39.
Fielding, Henry. 1998. Tom
Jones, edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fontane, Theodor. 1914. Effi
Briest, translated by William Cooper. New York: The German Publication Society.
. 1974. Sämtliche
Romane, Erzählungen, Gedichte,
Nachgelassenes, vol. 4, edited
by Walter Keitel and Helmuth Nürnberger, 7–296. Munich: Hanser.
Fraiman, Susan. 1995. “Jane
Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture, and
Imperialism.” Critical
Inquiry 21.4: 805–21.
Freud, Sigmund. 1953. The
Interpretation of
Dreams [1900]. In The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, translated by James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud, vol. 4. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Glick, Thomas F., and Elinor Shaffer (eds). 2014. The
Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in
Europe. London: Bloomsbury.
Göttsche, Dirk, and Florian Krobb (eds). 2009. Wilhelm
Raabe: Global Themes – International
Perspectives. Oxford: Legenda.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society, translated
by Thomas Burger. London: Polity Press.
Hanley, Ryan. 2019. Beyond
Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.
1770–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hartog, François. 2015. Regimes
of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of
Time, translated by Saskia Brown. New York: Columbia University Press.
Henckell, Karl. 1885. “Berliner
Abendbild.” In Moderne
Dichter-Charaktere, edited by Wilhelm Arent, 278–80. Berlin: Kamlah.
Higonnet, Margaret R. 1994. “Mapping
the Text, Critical
Metaphors.” In Reconfigured
Spheres: Feminist Explorations of Literary Space, edited
by Margaret Higonnet and Joan Templeton, 194–212. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Holberg, Ludvig. 1787. An
Introduction to Universal History (third
edition) [1733], amended and
translated by Gregory Sharpe and William Radcliffe. London: L. Davis et al.
Husserl, Edmund. 2001. Logical
Investigations, 2 vols, translated
by J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge.
. 2009. An
Enemy of the People. In An
Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, edited
and translated by James McFarlane, 1–106. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jakobson, Roman. 1971. “Two
Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic
Disturbance” [1956]. In Selected
Writings, vol. 2: Word and
Language, 239–59. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.
. 1987. “On
Realism in
Art” [1921]. In Language
and Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 19–27. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1964. “Mutmaßlicher
Anfang der
Menschengeschichte” [1786]. In Werke,
vol. 6: Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und
Pädagogik, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel, 83–102. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
. 2006. “Conjectural
Beginning of Human
History.” In “Toward
Perpetual Peace” and Other Writings in Politics, Peace, and
History, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, 24–36. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kern, Stephen. 2003. The
Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 [1983]. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kipling, Rudyard. 2015. “The
White Man’s Burden
[1899].” In Stories and
Poems, edited by Daniel Karlin, 479–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1979. “Geschichte,
Historie.” In Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe, vol. 2, edited
by Reinhart Koselleck, 593–718. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
. 2002. The
Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing
Time, translated by Todd Samuel Presner. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
. 2004. Futures
Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated
by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press.
Larsen, Svend Erik. 2006. “The
Lisbon Earthquake and the Scientific Turn in Kant’s
Philosophy.” European
Review 14.3: 359–67.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The
Urban Revolution [1970], translated
by Neil Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lepenies, Wolf. 1978. Das
Ende der Naturgeschichte: Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlichkeiten in den
Wissenschaften des 18. und 19.
Jahrhunderts [1976]. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Levine, George. 1981. The
Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady
Chatterley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. 1990. Mikhail
Bakhtin: Creation of a
Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Multatuli [= Eduard
Dekker]. 1987. Max Havelaar, or the
Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, translated
by Roy Edwards. London: Penguin.
. 1992. Max Havelaar of de
koffiveilingen der Nederlansche
Handelmaatschappy [1860]. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Raabe, Wilhelm. 1969. Stopfkuchen.
Gutmanns Reisen, edited by Karl Hoppe. Sämtliche
Werke, vol. 18. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
. 1983. Tubby
Schaumann, translated by Barker Fairley, revised
by John E. Woods. In Novels, edited
by Volkmar Sander, 155–311. New York: Continuum.
Richardson, Samuel. 2008. Pamela;
or, Virtue Rewarded, edited by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1998. Hermeneutics
and Criticism and Other Writings, edited and translated
by Andrew Bowie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2012. Vorlesungen
zur Hermeneutik und
Kritik [1838], edited
by Wolfgang Virmond and Hermann Patsch. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Schor, Naomi. 1985. Breaking
the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist
Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press.
Shklovsky, Victor. 1993. Theory
of Prose [1925], translated
by Benjamin Sher. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.
Simmel, Georg. 1971. “The
Metropolis and Mental
Life” [1903]. In On
Individuality and Social Forms, translated
by Donald N. Levine, 324–39. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
. 1985. Bland
franska bönder: Subjektive reseskildringar. Samlade
Verk, vol. 23. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Tambling, Jeremy (ed.). 2017. The
Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the
City. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tihanov, Galin. 2000. The
Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their
Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Varey, Simon. 1990. Space
and the Eighteenth-Century English
Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1999. The
New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of
Nations, translated by David Marsh. London: Penguin.
Virilio, Paul. 2006. Speed
and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, translated
by Mark Polizotti. Cambridge: MIT Press.
. 1912. “Poem
on the Lisbon Disaster, or an Examination of the Axiom ‘All is
Well’.” In Toleration
and other Essays, translated
by Joseph McCabe, 255–64. New York: Putnam’s Sons.
. 1994. “Poème
sur le désastre de
Lisbonne” [1756]. In Die
Erschütterung der vollkommenen Welt: Die Wirkung des Erdbebens von Lissabon im
Spiegel europäischer Zeitgenossen, edited
by Wolfgang Breidert, 61–73. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Weninger, Robert. 2017. Sublime
Conclusions: Last Man Narratives from Apocalypse to Death of
God. Cambridge: Legenda.
