Publisher:
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
"As nineteenth-century realism became more and more intrepid in its pursuit of describing and depicting everyday life, it blurred irrevocably into the caustic and severe mode of literature better named satire. Realism's task of portraying the human...
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Universitätsbibliothek der Eberhard Karls Universität
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"As nineteenth-century realism became more and more intrepid in its pursuit of describing and depicting everyday life, it blurred irrevocably into the caustic and severe mode of literature better named satire. Realism's task of portraying the human became indistinguishable from satire's directive to castigate the human. Introducing an entirely new way of thinking about realism and the Victorian novel, Aaron Matz refers to the fusion of realism and satire as 'satirical realism': it is a mode in which our shared folly and error are so entrenched in everyday life, and so unchanging, that they need no embellishment when rendered in fiction. Focusing on the novels of Eliot, Hardy, Gissing, and Conrad, and the theater of Ibsen, Matz argues that it was the transformation of Victorian realism into satire that granted it immense moral authority, but that led ultimately to its demise"--Provided by publisher Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Cambridge Studies In Nineteenth-Century Literature And Culture -- 1 Augustan Satire And Victorian Realism -- Limits And Endings -- The Human Complexion -- Scorning To Infinity -- Ridicule Is The Test Of Truth -- Beyond Correction -- 2 Terminal Satire And Jude The Obscure -- Mostly The Satirists -- Satire From Above -- Prepositional Satire -- Farce And The Comparatively Unreal -- Hardy And The Limits Of Genre -- Terminal Satire -- 3 George Gissings Ambivalent Realism -- The Place Of Realism In Fiction -- The Business Of Literature Abolished -- The Scorner Of Average Mankind -- Gissing, Dickens, And Idealistic Realism -- 4 The English Critics And The Norwegian Satirist -- The Most Famous Man In The English Literary World -- Enter The Norwegian Satirist -- Ibsen And The Illusion Of Reality -- The Amoral, The Moral, And The Immoral Ibsen -- Ibsen, Shaw, Realism, Satire -- 5 Truth And Caricature In The Secret Agent -- A New Departure In Genre -- The Whole Town Of Marvels And Mud -- Man And Mankind -- The Invincible Nature Of Human Error -- The Other Side Of Irony -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
