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In:Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectives
Edited by Svend Erik Larsen, Steen Bille Jørgensen and Margaret R. Higonnet
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXIII] 2022
► pp. vii–x

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Published online: 16 March 2022

https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxiii.toc

Table of contents

List of illustrations XI

Editors’ preface and acknowledgments XIII

Note on translations, cross-references and documentation XV

Introduction 1

Svend Erik Larsen

Steen Bille Jørgensen

Margaret R. Higonnet

Chapter 1.Psychological pathways: Emotion and memory 27

Core essay: “Memories inwrought with affection”: Emotion and memory in realism 29

Svend Erik Larsen

Patrizia Lombardo†

1.In the wake of revolution 29

2.The long eighteenth century 31

2.1Prejudice and passions 31

2.2“The vulgar practice of the hour” 35

2.3The thrill of the new 38

3.First transformation: Social vision descends into social frustration 43

3.1Between legal contract and national identity 43

3.2National illusions and realities of war 50

3.3Revolution as emotion 54

4.Second transformation: Self-fulfillment turns into self-disillusionment 61

4.1Self-education in a blind alley 61

4.2The superfluous man 64

4.3Passions for or against life? 69

5.Third transformation: From frail friendship to haunted homes 76

5.1The unreadable other 76

5.2The delicate balance of friendship 81

5.3Love or honor? 87

6.Fourth transformation: Alienating settings yield sublime awe 96

6.1Landscape and cityscape 96

6.2The natural and the technological sublime 105

7.Coda: Turning the century 115

7.1New theories 116

7.2“At the heart of a vast enigma” 120

7.3Into the twentieth century 124

Case studies

The interplay of emotion and memory: Stendhal, Zola, Musil 135

Patrizia Lombardo†

Situations of sympathy: Eroding emotions and everyday life in the realist novel 151

Tone Selboe

The poetics of disgust in realist fiction: Émile Zola and Sofi Oksanen 169

Riikka Rossi

Attunement: Mood and memory in Goethe, Flaubert and Dickens 185

Stefan Hajduk

Spanish and Latin American memory novels 201

Hans Lauge Hansen

History and untold memories: New realism in Assia Djebar’s films 217

Maya Boutaghou

Chapter 2.Referential pathways: Objects and bodies 231

Core essay: Material matters: The surfaces of realist fiction 233

Simon J. James

1.Surfaces: The outsides of realism 234

2.Objects: The material in the fictional 240

3.Clothing: Presenting the self 246

4.The body as object: The material of the self 250

5.Physical beauty: Valuing bodies 253

6.Producing the self: Environments 256

7.Framing the self: Beautiful environments 260

8.Abstracting the object: Money 262

9.Material does matter 264

Case studies

Curating realism in a world of objects: Collecting in Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle 271

Anthony Walker-Cook

Caricature and realism 287

Svend Erik Larsen

Realism and allegory: Balzac, Dickens and James 303

Jeremy Tambling

“Distance avails not”: Representing the modern masses 317

Svend Erik Larsen

Toward affective realism: Performing the reverse side of the face 337

Tomáš Jirsa

Posthumanism and realism 351

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

Chapter 3.Formal pathways: Genre and form 365

Core essay: Dynamics of realist forms 367

Steen Bille Jørgensen

Margaret R. Higonnet

1.Introduction: New forms, new realities 367

1.1Reflexiveness and composition 368

1.2Openness 371

2.Giving form to social reality 373

2.1Beyond formal models 373

2.2Poetry and everyday life 378

2.3A pictorial turn 386

3.Popular culture and formal innovation 393

3.1New audiences and democratization of culture 393

3.2Popular forms and new aesthetic ideals 396

3.3Literary models and systemic worldviews 404

4.Critical positions between fiction and non-fiction 412

4.1Prefaces and the battle of realism 412

4.2Theatricality and irony 418

4.3Narrative masks: Women’s writing and ironic play 424

5.Scaling and rescaling 434

5.1Scale, perception and reading 434

5.2Shorter forms 439

6.Beyond realism? 446

6.1Collage novels and language poetry 448

6.2Short short stories 451

6.3Concrete poetry 455

6.4Ready-mades 458

6.5Interactive forms 461

7.The questioning continues 465

Case studies

Forms of realism in children’s literature 473

Margaret R. Higonnet

Early theatrical realism on page and stage: Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg 489

Joan Templeton

Poetry, Pessoa and realism 503

Jeremy Tambling

The making of the historical narrative in the Swahili utenzi : The realism of a poetic form 519

Alena Rettová

Photography and dissent in John Lewis’s graphic novel March 535

Katharine Capshaw

The visions of John Ball: Iain Bell’s opera In Parenthesis 549

Jennie-Rebecca Falcetta

Chapter 4.Geographical pathways: Worlding realism 563

Core essay: Dialogic encounters 565

Svend Erik Larsen

Margaret R. Higonnet

1.Worlding and realism 565

2.Literature of migration 572

2.1Reconceptualizing migration 574

3.Across the pacific 580

3.1Realism of projection 580

3.2Realism of exchange 584

4.The world at war 588

4.1Cosmopolitan dialogues through new media 589

4.2Voices at first-hand: Soldiers 593

4.3Truth of things 599

4.4Medical realism 601

4.5Writing back from the colonies 603

5.“A second tradition” for “translated men” 613

5.1Place: Troubled homes 614

6.Language: In the contact zones 628

6.1Translation as cultural interaction 630

6.2Tackling the language barriers 635

7.Coda: Different realities, alternative realist practices 648

7.1African spirits and digital identities 650

7.2Trapped in cyberspace 653

7.3The question remains 656

Case studies

Varieties of theatrical realism after Ibsen 667

Joan Templeton

Is there a notion of ‘realism’ in traditional China? 685

Nicolas Zufferey

Worlding of realism: The case of Naguib Mahfouz 703

Win-chin Ouyang

The real magic in Miguel Angel Asturias’ magical realism: Legends of Guatemala and The President 721

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen

Narrate or describe: Documentation and the tasks of realism 737

Eleni Coundouriotis

Realism in the colony 751

Ulka Anjaria

Notes on contributors 763

Index 767