Showing papers on "Realism published in 1977"

Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism

Abstract: Five Faces of Modernity is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism. The concept of modernity-the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours-is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise. Five Faces of Modernity attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, or symbolism and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

Petals of Blood

Abstract: Ranging back and forth between satire, metaphor and stark realism, Ngugi unfolds a tangible landscape both beautiful and horrfying, as tribalism and village life are manipulated in the name of progress by the cynical bureaucrats

A Lecture on Realism

Abstract: The Big Flame is a play written by Jim Allen, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach for BBC television. I want to discuss it in relation to our understanding of realism. It should be clear at the outset that except in the local vocabulary of particular schools, realism is a highly variable and inherently complex term. In fact, as a term, it only exists in critical vocabulary from the mid-nineteenth century, yet it is clear that methods to which the term refers are very much older. Let me make just one obvious general distinction between conceiving realism in terms of a particular artistic method and conceiving realism in terms of a particular attitude towards what is called 'reality'. Now if, taking the first definition, we concentrate on method, we put ourselves at once in a position in which the method can be seen as timeless: in which it is, so to say, a permanent possibility of choice for any particular artist. Certain things can be learned from this kind of emphasis, but once we become aware of the historical variations within this method, we find ourselves evidently dissatisfied with the abstraction of a method which overrides its relations with other methods within a work or with other aims and intentions.

The most important art : Eastern European film after 1945

Abstract: Lenin's dictum, that film was "the most important art," is now the title of a new and comprehensive study of the East European film industry in the crucial years after 1945. Given the politically volatile situation in Eastern Europe, Lenin's remark takes on meanings replete with irony and political significance. By chronologically charting the fate of films and filmmakers as affected by the shifting political climate in their respective countries, the authors, at times, manage to create a dramatic tension in what is essentially a historical survey. Occasional subheads introduce new terms ("pedagogic realism"), genres ("urban and rural"), women directors, and significant periods and movements in the social and cultural histories of each country. Although some of the more important films are given short shrift, this is hardly to be lamented given the wealth of information on lesser and not easily accessible films the study provides. Well documented by a wide selection of photographs, The Most Important Art is, in lieu of the many films that are hopefully stored in archives behind the Iron Curtain, the best reference guide to one of the major and promising centers of filmmaking in the world.

Action and Interpretation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Abstract: Notes on the contributors Introduction 1. Theory and value in the social sciences Mary Hesse 2. Indeterminacy and interpretation Christopher Hookaway 3. Rational man theory Philip Pettit 4. Maximising, moralising and dramatising Alan Ryan 5. The meaning of another culture's beliefs John Skorupski 6. 'Realistic' realism and the progress of science Nick Jardine 7. On 'the reality of the past' John McDowell 8. Practising history and social science on 'realist' assumptions John Dunn Index.

The Red Badge of Courage: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism

Abstract: First published in 1895, America's greatest novel of the Civil War was written before 21-year-old Stephen Crane had "smelled even the powder of a sham battle." But this powerful psychological study of a young soldier's struggle with the horrors, both within and without, that war strikes the reader with its undeniable realism and with its masterful descriptions of the moment-by-moment riot of emotions felt by me under fire. Ernest Hemingway called the novel an American classic, and Crane's genius is as much apparent in his sharp, colorful prose as in his ironic portrayal of an episode of war so intense, so immediate, so real that the terror of battle becomes our own ... in a masterpiece so unique that many believe modern American fiction began with Stephen Crane. "The Red Badge Of Courage" has long been considered the first great 'modern' novel of war by an American--the first novel of literary distinction to present war without heroics and this in a spirit of total irony and skepticism." -- Alfred Kazin

"It's the Truth Even If It Didn't Happen": Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Abstract: Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (first published in 1962) has sold millions of paperback copies and been particularly popular with college students. The hero. Randle Patrick McMurphy, epitomizes, especially for the young, a nonconformist's struggle against the oppressive social system. The mental ward's patients- the Acutes, the Chronics, the Vegetables- have counterparts outside the hospital. The hospital's hierarchical power structurewith the Big Nurse as castrator at its top- reflects the cold, calculating machinations of a repressive society that disregards civil rights and destroys individuality. In 1963, David Merrick and Edward Lewis produced Dale Wassermann dramatized version of Cuckoo's Nest at the Cort Theatre, and Kirk Douglas starred as Randle P. McMurphy. I did not see this early dramatization, but I did see the later production of Wassermann play when it opened off-Broadway in 1971 at the Mercer-Hansberry Theatre, where applauding young audiences rooted for McMurphy as he struggled against Nurse Ratched, agent of the Combine.1 More recently, a film version of Cuckoo's Nest was adapted by screen writers Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman and directed by Milos Forman, starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as the Big Nurse. The film won five Oscars at the Academy Awards, including best screenplay adapted from another medium. This was the first time since 1934 that one film got all the major awards: best picture, best actor, best actress, and best director. Most critics have praised the movie for its realism and comic sensibility, but also have criticized its absence of "the nightmare quality that made the book a capsulized allegcry of an increasingly mad reality."2 The film audience stamped and cheered McMurphy as he battled the terrors of the mental hospital. But only the novel transforms the horrors of the mental ward into a microcosm of the complex suppression exercised by society upon its dissident members. Ken Kesey-in a 1970 interview in Rolling Stone- expressed his wish to make a film of the Cuckoo's Nest: "I could do it weird. I could do it so that people, when they left there, they couldn't find the exit. Direct it. Direct it and write it."3 Kesey's inclination to "do it weird" is at the opposite pole from the Milos Forman movie, which accentuates realism. The film is set in Oregon State Hospital at Salem, a large, impersonal-looking group of buildings, with high fences, window-locked screens outside every room, stark locked wards, large sleeping rooms devoid of privacy, and limited activity areas. The camera's eye focuses on repeated lineups of patients for medication, therapeutic community sessions, strong aides restraining patients, and electric-shock treatment. Especially realistic is the administration of shock treatment with such particulars as the mouth gag, electrodes placed on each side of the head, the convulsions, and the facial discoloration of the patient. Forman details the sordid and also the comic aspects of a " cuckoo's nest," where physical aberrations reflect psychological ones. The stuttering Billy Bibbit becomes painful to watch. Other patients are comic representatives of a "loony bin": the huge zombi, Tabor; the short, fat Martini; the paraplegic colonel in the wheelchair hitting a punching bag with his cane; the catatonic who, during McMurphy's wild party, has liquor squirted into his mouth from an enema tube; and the patient who dances about endlessly. Casting was crucial for Milos Forman: "Since the patients in the mental ward have few lines to say, [the] audience must remember each simply by their look."4 Comic realism is the forte of Milos Forman. It was evident in his earlier films, Loves of a Blonde, The Firemen's Ball, and Taking off .5 Cuckoo's Nest under Forman's direction, focuses on the conflict between the Big Nurse and McMurphy; the agent of Society as opposed to its dissident member. Kesey's surreal prose is converted into concrete detailed scenes. …

The Problem of Realism in Modern Drama

Abstract: W E COULD BEGIN with a number of possible definitions of realism, and then observe the ways in which they can be applied to the modem drama. But it seems to me that there is an approach which is far more relevant to the problem of realism in modem drama. We should not forget that literary movements do not take the form of more or less abstract theoretical definitions: they are closely connected to certain literary genres, and we can scarcely think about them without considering these genres at the same time. Romanticism represents the absolute domination of lyric poetry, and when we say "realism," there immediately comes to mind the novel, "the major vehicle of literary realism," as Harry Levin has called it. The novel is certainly the genre in which the ideals of realism are best and most adequately realized-to be more precise, in order that they be realized at all, the novel was needed, the only literary genre equipped to recreate observed and everyday life in a way which would satisfy our instinct for imitation and the desire for recognition. That is why the problem of realism in modern drama should first of all be treated as a problem of the relationship between the drama and the novel. It is not at all accidental that the beginnings of naturalistic theater are connected with the dramatization of one novel in particular, Zola's Thir'ese Raquin. In this manner realist theater (the expressions realism and naturalism can for now be considered synonymous) already at the very outset emphasized the close tie with the art of the novel, which had become a certain type of model for observing and representing life. Nor can we forget that Ibsen's realist playsthe first realist plays in the history of modem theater-are often considered final chapters of unwritten novels. It is for this reason that Lukics says that Rosmersholm is in fact a novel, whose last chapter Ibsen "dressed in the exterior form of the drama," and Raymond Williams says that The Wild Duck "involves a degree of detail which cannot fully be realized in the explicit, spoken framework of the play. The refinement of the characters, one might say, is a fictional refinement; the degree of attention to motive and behavior is that of the psychological drama." In the jargon of the theatrical world, realist drama is often called "the art of the novel on the stage." What does all this mean? Ibsen is a writer who initiated the modem period in the history of drama, and when at the very beginning of this period we find that the drama is in such close proximity to the novel, something is revealed about the nature not only of realist drama, but also of modem drama in general. Ibsen wanted to return to drama its lost literary and intellectual dignity and-consciously or unconsciously-he found himself close to the art of the novel, the central literary genre of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Dispositions, Realism, and Explanation

Abstract: 1.1. The aim of the present paper is twofold. First, it is to give a brief realist account of dispositional concepts and discourse. Secondly, it is to apply this account to clarify some dispositional psychological concepts, such as wanting and believing, assuming that these concepts are introduced as suitable functional states of the agent.

Character, Closure, and Impressionist Fiction

Abstract: Many of the formal features of the impressionist narrative that Ford Madox Ford catalogues in his critical writings become apparent whenever a personally idiosyncratic view intrudes in narration, but it was Ford who declared impressionism a literary movement and who defined realism as the record of impressions of a person present at the scene. In The March of Literature, he places the fiction of his school in the tradition by acknowledging literary ancestors and by marking the significant change in narrative art with the writings of Flaubert, followed by the impressionists—Ford himself, as well as such authors as James and Conrad—who "saw that life did not narrate but made impressions on our brains." 1 Their modifications of the nineteenth-century narrative techniques associated with " realism " may be seen simply as another manifestation of the general cultural change associated with the catch-all concept of relativism. Their treatment of the convention of character inherited from the

Solzhenitsyn's Rhetorical Revolution

Abstract: Western critics have been quick to analyze Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's humanitarian concerns and brilliant development of the metaphorical novel. What has been lacking in discussions of Solzhenitsyn's works is an understanding of their relationship to Soviet literary tradition; his writings need to be placed in the context not only of the dissident movement but of Soviet literature as a whole. Solzhenitsyn's writings are neither simply an anachronistic return to critical realism with no relation to the Soviet literary experience, as Irving Howe maintains in his essay, "The Straight and the Crooked," nor are they a natural development of "socialist realism," as George Lukacs has argued in his book, Solzhenitsyn. Howe states categorically that "Whatever Solzhenitsyn's novels may be, they really have nothing in common with 'socialist realism.' "' He characterizes Solzhenitsyn's writings as a return to the Tolstoyan novel and "a revolutionary act of the spirit."2 Howe feels that Solzhenitsyn is seized by vision rather than motivated by a desire to innovate technically. Lukacs also admires Solzhenitsyn for dealing with moral-historical issues rather than experimental techniques. He characterizes Solzhenitsyn as "heir not only to the best tendencies in early socialist realism, but also to the great literary tradition."3 Lukacs cites Makarenko's nonfictional account of a Soviet youth camp, Road to Life, and Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain as historical antecedents to Solzhenitsyn's fiction. However, both of these critics are ignoring the Soviet literary experience of the thirties, forties, and fifties, which had a profound, if negative, influence on Solzhenitsyn. Stalin's aesthetic doctrine of socialist realism, as established in 1932, embodies on a literary plane the social and political facets of Soviet life to which Solzhenitsyn is responding in his own fiction. A full appreciation of Solzhenitsyn must, therefore, take his reaction to the literary aspect of Soviet socialism into account.

Naturalism to lyrical realism - 14 unpublished letters from moore,george to netscher,frans

Abstract: L'attitude a l'egard du naturalisme de Zola, notamment en Allemagne et Hollande. Publication des lettres de G.M.

Romance-A Congenial Form: Mel'nikov-Pecherskii's Grandma's Yarns and Olden Times

Abstract: In the history of Russian criticism the works of P. I. Mel'nikovPecherskii have been repeatedly misinterpreted. A nonrealist flourishing during the heyday of Russian realism, Mel'nikov, who wrote under the pseudonym "Andrei Pecherskii," is either derided for his literary nonconformism or regarded as a realist manque.1 This is well illustrated by the treatment which has been accorded the novellas Grandma's Yarns (Babushkiny rosskazni, 1858) and Olden Times (Starye gody, 1857), two of Mel'nikov's most distinctive works. Both are supposedly eyewitness accounts of eighteenthcentury Russian life. In the first, an old woman of high society "recalls" two extraordinary personages, and in the second, we learn of a prince's untrammeled way of life through an old groom's "memories." During the more than one hundred years since their publication, critics and scholars, both those favorably and unfavorably disposed toward Mel'nikov, have tried unsuccessfully to place the novellas in the broad tradition of nineteenth-century realism.2 Their mode, however, is "romantic" rather than realistic. They are variants of romance, not realistic stories. In the absence of appropriate Russian criticism, it is helpful to turn to Western criticism devoted to the phenomenon of romance-in particular, nineteenth-century ro-

Science and realism in John Webster's the duchess of Malfi

Abstract: (1977). Science and realism in John Webster's the duchess of Malfi. Studia Neophilologica: Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 233-242.

A Commentary on the Book Art for the Millions

Abstract: In what might be called from a cultural point of view the Age of Individualism in the Western World, stylistic analysis of art has increasingly emphasized the personality of artists, prizing their idiosyncrasies and extravagances as Promethean gifts that raise humanity to Olympian heights. This emphasis obscures the degree to which patronage governs the output of artists. Currently, artists accept dictation from a small financially powerful group, which may have refined sensibilities, but community patronage endowed the decoration of public sites on the acropolis in ancient Greece. Townspeople, mainly merchants, of the Romanesque and Gothic periods supported the construction of cathedrals as samples of the heaven to which they aspired and, at the same time, glorified their prosperity won in the growing new economy of the open market. Even a patron like Lorenzo de' Medici could guide a generation of artists during the Florentine protoRenaissance to reflect the practical interests of the community. Since the Renaissance, patrons have mostly preferred to support expression of their special interests. When the French court of the Bourbons supported Academic Classicism and the decorative fantasies of the rococo, which were aped by other dynasties in Europe, the more productive section of the population simultaneously supported realism in art that celebrated its simpler ways of life. Such outstanding artists as the Le Nain brothers and De La Tour led up to the more prominent mastery of Chardin in France. Dutch art of the 17th century was dedicated almost exclusively to this type of expression, in contrast to the exuberant baroque art of Rubens that was supported by aristocrats in nearby Flanders. Colonialism in North America has confused the relation of art to the realities of the socio-economic background of the U.S.A. by implications of the cultural superiority of art imported from European homelands. Though the tasks of early settlement and frontier life promoted practical and egalitarian emphases, a narrow but influential section of the population attempted to achieve elitist distinction by the importation of aristocratic European art forms and mannerisms. A tradition of realistic art celebrating native accomplishment managed to hold its own, however, until accumulations of corporate wealth toward the end of the 19th century produced a financial 'aristocracy' that began to form collections of costly old masters and works displaying fashionable European sophistication. The practice of