realism
I. the origin of the concept of realism
realism is one of the most common terms in literary criticism and literary research. This term is generally used in two senses: one is realism in a broad sense, which generally refers to the loyalty of literature and art to nature. It originally originated from the oldest western literary theory, that is, the simple concept of "art is the direct reappearance or imitation of nature" of the ancient Greeks. The fidelity of a work or its similarity to an object becomes the criterion for judging the success of a work. Vasala's "The Life of the Painter" once described some interesting anecdotes about art history: peacocks pecked at cherries painted too realistically by Benazioni; Giotto's teacher used a brush to drive away the flies Giotto had added to a portrait. This concept of realism has dominated the history of human art for nearly two thousand years, and it still remains in daily life. The other is realism in a narrow sense, which is a historical concept, especially the realistic movement that took place in the 19th century. Historically, realism originated from the debate with romanticism, and finally gradually lost the position of mainstream discourse in the debate with modernism.
R. Wellek's The Concept of Realism in Literary Studies traces the history of realism terms in Europe and America: the specific application of this concept in the field of literature was in 1826. A French writer claims that the realistic creed of faithfully imitating the model provided by nature is increasing day by day, and it will be realistic literature in the 19th century. The popularity of this term is related to the active application of painter Courbet and novelist Champfleury. Courbet labeled his rejected works as realism, which triggered a controversy. In 1857, Champfleury published an anthology entitled Realism to defend the creed of realism. At the same time, Duranti, his friend, published Realism, a literary criticism magazine. Although only six issues were published in a flash in the pan, its writing style was controversial and had a wide impact. Being regarded as conservative realism by the modernist avant-garde in the 2th century, it also had the avant-garde character of challenging literary conventions when it was born in the 19th century. Duranti once said clearly: "This terrible term' realism' is the subversive of the school it represents. It is absurd to say' realism' school, because realism expresses a frank and perfect expression of individuality; Stereotypes, imitation and any genre are exactly what it opposes "(1). Accurately speaking, realism challenges the artistic conventions of romanticism. In the History of Western Literary Criticism, Wilmsett and Brooks understood realism as a kind of reverse movement in the mid-19th century, which resisted "all kinds of unrealistic things". Duranti and Fleuri inherited Planche's thought of resisting romanticism in the 193s, and sharply attacked romantic writers such as Hugo, Miao Sai and Winnie the Pooh, accusing them of "ignoring their own times and trying to dig from the past". Realists reject the lies of this poem. (2) Therefore, realism appears as the antithesis and adversary of romanticism, which originally contains the significance of opposing fantasy and pretence and advocating truth.
Second, the theoretical meaning of realism
Realism reached its climax through the development of theorists such as Turner, Engels, belinsky and Luacs in the 2th century and the literary practice of great writers such as Balzac and Tolstoy. Realism theory is becoming more and more perfect, forming a complete set of discourse rules. It includes the following meanings:
First, it is the most fundamental meaning of realistic terms to truly and objectively reproduce social reality. Damian Grant explained the objectiveness of realism with the theory of "conformity", which he called a serious psychology of literature. "If literature ignores or belittles the external reality, Hope only draws nutrition from unrestrained imagination and exists only for imagination, this serious psychology will protest." (3) This emphasizes the loyalty and responsibility of literature to reality. R Wellek interprets this meaning from the historical background of realism against romanticism: "It excludes illusory fantasy, fairy tales, implication and symbol, high stylization, and pure abstraction and sculpture, which means that we don't need fiction, fairy tales and dream world." (4) In this sense, we hope to truly present the true state of social existence. As the opponent of romanticism and the spokesman of the poor little people on the edge of society, realism theory emphasizes the ideology of revealing the truth and debunking the status quo. In other words, realism resists romanticism as the discourse form of bourgeois intellectuals, and instead pursues objectivity and speaks for those disadvantaged groups or classes who fall into poverty and are marginalized. Obviously, it has simple human feelings and humanitarian spirit.
the theoretical meaning of realism "objectively reappearing the contemporary social reality" is deeply explained in Luacs's exposition. The most loyal believer and the last defender of realism wrote a large number of works, summarizing the artistic experience of realism and responding to the challenges that realism encountered in the 2th century: History of Realism (1939), Balzac, Stendhal and Zola (1945), The Great Russian Realist (1946) and European Realism Research (1948). First of all, he reinterpreted the meaning of realism objectivity from the perspective of epistemology: "The task of art is to faithfully and truly describe the reality as a whole." (5) Luacs put forward the realistic artistic requirement of overall description of reality. The so-called overall description is to reflect the totality of society-history, pursue the breadth of literary description, and grasp social life from all aspects of the whole; Explore the essential factors hidden in the back of the phenomenon and discover the internal overall relationship of things. Secondly, Luacs did not understand the objectivity of realism as pure objectivity excluding any subjective factors, and he did not regard literature reflecting social reality as a static mirror. Luacs affirmed the importance of subjective knowledge, emphasizing the unity of objectivity and subjectivity, and the unity of the external world and the inner world. Luacs fought on both sides, fighting against naturalism for the purity of realism, and excluded Flaubert and Zola's trivial objectivity, which lacked integrity, from the realistic camp; On the other hand, we should respond to the challenge of modernism and criticize Joyce, Prost and other modernist writers, thinking that they have disintegrated all content and all forms. Therefore, modernism cannot truly reflect the reality as a whole.
second, a well-known typical theory. Typical theory constitutes a core content of realistic theory. Generally speaking, what typical theory wants to solve is the relationship between the special and the general of literary figures. Hegel and Schelling laid the aesthetic foundation for the spread of typicalism. Hegel believed that personality is the real center of ideal artistic expression, and the reason why a personality is interesting is its integrity, while integrity "is because the universality of the power it represents is combined with the particularity of individual characters, and it becomes its own unified self in this unity." (6) According to Wellek's historical trace, the original user of typical terms is Schelling, which means a figure with great universality like myth. Romanticism first widely used this concept, and the typical concept shifted from romanticism to realism, which was related to the conversion of Balzac and Turner. In the preface of Human Comedy, Balzac claimed to be a typical social researcher, while Turner frequently used this term to discuss the personalities of social class figures, which gradually evolved into the most important theoretical concept of realism. Typicality is also a common tool used by belinsky when discussing Russian novels. He even thinks: "Typicality is one of the basic laws of creation. Without it, there is no creation ... It is necessary to make a character a representative of people in a special world, but also a complete and individual person." (7) Major Kovalyov in Nikolai Gogol's works is not a major Kovalyov, but a major Kovalyov. Even describing a water bearer is not just about one person, but about all the people who carry water. This is what belinsky called the typical essence. After the publication of Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q, many people were uneasy, always thinking that it was about themselves. The unique Ah Q had a huge * * * character and even became synonymous with national character. Realism calls this literary image, which is a perfect combination of individuality and sexuality, a typical image.
third, historical requirements. In Wellek's view, historicity is a feasible criterion in realistic theory. He quoted auerbach's comments on Red and Black to illustrate this point: "The hero" is rooted in a general political, social and economic reality, which is concrete and constantly developing' "(8). Wellek's view is right. Realism does have a historic dimension. In his letter to Ma Hakenas, Engels said, "Realism means that in addition to the truth of details, typical characters in typical environments should be reproduced." Only by putting the characters in a concrete overall reality of politics, society and economy can we achieve the height of "full realism". Moreover, this concrete overall reality is constantly developing, just as Luacs's realism wants to shape those vivid dialectical processes. "In this process, essence is transformed into phenomenon and shows itself in the phenomenon; It also shapes the side of this process, that is, the phenomenon reveals its own essence when the process moves. On the other hand, these individual factors not only contain dialectical movements and mutual transformation, but also constantly influence each other; They are the factors of an uninterrupted process. True art thus always expresses the whole of human life by shaping the movement, development and expansion of these factors. " (9) To put it simply, the historical dimension of realism requires a true portrayal of complex social relations and reflects the contradictory movement process of complex social relations. The historical requirement of realism is essentially based on social analysis, that is, to describe people's social experience and the structure of society itself as artistic principles. Moreover, realism tries its best to reveal the dialectical principle between man and society through the realistic contradiction of man. Realism confirms that the more carefully we observe the social reality, the deeper we study it, and the more thoroughly we understand the relationship and contradictory movement of events and details, the more we can gain real power.
Third, the generalization of realism
Realistic discourse occupies the mainstream position, and gradually evolves into an iron law of art that literature cannot overstep: only the art that follows the rules of realism is the real art. When realism has become a universal truth, it has fallen into an awkward position in the face of the complexity and richness of art and the changes in art history. How to deal with the challenge of new art? How to deal with the current historical situation? There are generally two strategies of realism: one is Luacs's practice, realism is a specific literary-historical paradigm, and the historical meaning of realism theory is strictly defended, and the boundaries between realism and non-realism are clear. However, Luacs still praised the authority of realism without reservation, and still believed that real art must be realistic. As a result, Luacs was caught in a scuffle with modernism, and questioned or even denied the legitimacy of modernism with realistic art conventions, leaving realism with an aesthetic conservative and entrenched position.
It seems that a more appropriate coping strategy is the generalization of realism, that is, expanding the boundaries of realism indefinitely until this concept can accommodate all kinds of new art and new experiences. As Damian Grant said, "In the 19th century, we can see the tendency to open the door to realism. In the view of recent theorists, this is the only possibility left for the development of realism." (1) Harry Levin, Arthur mcdowell, Ernst Fisher and Roger Galloti all used the "enlarged perspective" to expand the semantic boundaries of realism and remove some restrictions of realism. "All great writers can be regarded as one of the realists in terms of their sharp and prudent criticism of the life he knows." (11) Realism is only a necessary condition for art. The flexibility of the concept makes realism move from a prison to a complete opening and become a kind of "boundless realism". Roger Galloti's Boundless Realism incorporated Picasso, Saint-John Perse and Kafka, avant-garde writers who were rejected by orthodox or strict realism. Galloti expressed this open position in the postscript of this book: "From the works of Standal and Balzac, Courbet and Lie Bin, Tolstoy and martin du gal, Gorky and Mayakovski, we can draw a great standard of realism. But if the works of Kafka, Saint-John Perse or Picasso do not meet these standards, what shall we do? Should they be excluded from realism, that is, art? Or on the contrary, should we open up and expand the definition of realism, and give realism a new scale according to these unique works of the contemporary era, so that we can integrate all these new contributions with the heritage of the past? " Galloti chose the second road without hesitation, and according to his argument logic, there is only such a choice: "There is no unrealism, that is, there is no reference to the art outside it and independent of its reality." (12) Art is realism. If we can't deny that the works of Kafka, Saint-John Perse and Picasso are art, then they must be realism. Galloti's redeeming feature lies in his refusal to define realism essentially and to judge new art by the standards of past art. But the problem is that everything becomes realism, so what is realism? Boundless realism or realism? Terry Eagleton criticized Galloti's concept of "boundless realism" in his text, ideology and realism as bland and all-encompassing, but it has no important significance. "A concept without boundaries can't be a concept at all, just as a river without banks can be a lake or a sea, but it is definitely not a river." (13)
In the history of using realistic terms, another phenomenon frequently occurs. That is to say, a large number of attributives are absorbed, forming a variety of realism. According to Damian Grant's collection, There are many kinds of realism: critical realism, persistent realism, dynamic realism, external realism, grotesque realism, normative realism, ideal realism, lower realism, ironic realism, war realism, simple realism, national realism, naturalistic realism, objective realism, optimistic realism, pessimistic realism, plastic realism, poetic realism, psychological realism and daily realism. People will encounter other so-and-so realism if they are not careful, which shows that this term has strong reproductive ability and inclusiveness, and it covers all kinds of completely different art types. On the one hand, it is proved that realism once had a prominent political position and supreme aesthetic authority, and the new art gained the legitimacy of its existence and development by virtue of its marriage with realism. Realism has therefore become an extremely large family, which is also the generalization of realism, which occurred in the natural movement of literary history. This generalization gradually hollows out the definite meaning of the concept of realism, making it a doubtful literary term.
Fourth, the questioned realism
Realism has often been taken hostage since its birth.