Research Catalog

Realism, form, and representation in the Edwardian novel : synthetic realism

Title: Realism, form, and representation in the Edwardian novel : synthetic realism / Charlotte Jones.
Author: Jones, Charlotte (Charlotte Rebecca)
Publication: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 21-5837	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xxvi, 303 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"'The real represents to my perception the things that we cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another', wrote Henry James in 1907. This description, riven with double negatives, hesitation, and uncertainty, encapsulates the epistemological difficulties of realism, for underlying its narrative and descriptive apparatus as an aesthetic mode lies a philosophical quandary. What grounds the 'real' of the realist novel? What kind of perception isrequired to validate the experience of reality? How does the realist novel represent the difficulty of knowing? What comes to the fore in James's account, as in so many, is how the forms of realism are constituted by a relation to unknowing, absence, and ineffability. Realism, Form, and Representation in the Edwardian Novel recovers a neglected literary history centred on the intricate relationship between fictional representation and philosophical commitment. It asks how-or if-we can conceptualize realist novels when the objects of their representational intentions are realities that might exist beyond what is empirically verifiable by sense data or analytically verifiable by logic, and are thus irreducible to conceptual schemes or linguisticpractices-a formulation Charlotte Jones refers to as 'synthetic realism'. In new readings of Edwardian novels including Conrad's Nostromo and The Secret Agent, Wells's Tono-Bungay, and Ford's The Good Soldier, this volume revises and reconsiders key elements of realist novel theory-metaphor and metonymy; character interiority; the insignificant detail; omniscient narration and free indirect discourse; causal linearity-to uncover the representational strategies by which realist writers grapple with the recalcitrance of reality as a referential anchor, and seek to give form to the force, opacity, and uncertain scope of realities that may lie beyond the material."--

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-290) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Joseph Conrad: the visible universe -- May Sinclair: the finding of the absolute -- Arnold Bennett: what life is -- H.G. Wells: more than history can pattern -- Ford Madox Ford: the whole impression -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 21-5837

ISBN

9780198857921
0198857926

LCCN

2020937551

OCLC

1147912405

Author

Jones, Charlotte (Charlotte Rebecca), author.

Title

Realism, form, and representation in the Edwardian novel : synthetic realism / Charlotte Jones.

Publisher

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-290) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

JFE 21-5837

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