Satire in an Age of Realism

Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-521-19738-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 72, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 504 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Matz, Aaron

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Augustan satire and Victorian realism; 2. Terminal satire and Jude the Obscure; 3. George Gissing's ambivalent realism; 4. The English critics and the Norwegian satirist; 5. Truth and caricature in The Secret Agent; Epilogue.

Über Autor(innen)

Matz, Aaron
Aaron Matz is Assistant Professor of English at Scripps College, California.