The man of the era of realism. Characteristic features, signs and principles of realism

What is realism in literature? It is one of the most common areas, reflecting a realistic image of reality. The main task of this direction is reliable disclosure of phenomena encountered in life, with the help of a detailed description of the depicted characters and the situations that happen to them, through typing. Important is the lack of embellishment.

In contact with

Among other directions, only in the realistic one, special attention is paid to the correct artistic depiction of life, and not to the emerging reaction to certain life events, for example, as in romanticism and classicism. The heroes of realist writers appear before readers exactly as they were presented to the author's gaze, and not as the writer would like to see them.

Realism, as one of the most widespread trends in literature, settled closer to the middle of the 19th century after its predecessor, romanticism. The 19th century was subsequently designated as the era of realistic works, but romanticism did not cease to exist, it only slowed down in development, gradually turning into neo-romanticism.

Important! The definition of this term was first introduced into literary criticism by D.I. Pisarev.

The main features of this direction are as follows:

Full compliance with reality depicted in any work of the picture.
True specific typing of all the details in the images of the characters.
The basis is the conflict situation between the individual and society.
Image in the work deep conflict situations the drama of life.
The author pays special attention to the description of all environmental phenomena.
A significant feature of this literary trend is the writer's considerable attention to the inner world of a person, his state of mind.

Main genres

In any of the areas of literature, including the realistic, a certain system of genres is being formed. It was the prose genres of realism that had a special influence on its development, due to the fact that they were more suitable for a more correct artistic description of new realities, their reflection in literature. The works of this direction are divided into the following genres.

A social and everyday novel that describes the way of life and a certain type of characters inherent in this way of life. A good example of a social genre was Anna Karenina.
A socio-psychological novel, in the description of which one can see a complete detailed disclosure of the human personality, his personality and inner world.
The realistic novel in verse is a special kind of novel. A wonderful example of this genre is "", written by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
A realistic philosophical novel contains age-old reflections on topics such as: the meaning of human existence, the opposition of good and evil sides, a certain purpose of human life. An example of a realistic philosophical novel is "", the author of which is Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov.
Story.
Tale.

In Russia, its development began in the 1830s and became a consequence of the conflict situation in various spheres of society, the contradictions between the highest ranks and the common people. Writers began to address the topical issues of their time.

Thus begins the rapid development of a new genre - a realistic novel, which, as a rule, described the hard life of the common people, their hardships and problems.

The initial stage in the development of the realistic trend in Russian literature is the "natural school". During the period of the “natural school”, literary works were more inclined to describe the position of the hero in society, his belonging to any kind of profession. Among all genres, the leading place was occupied by physiological essay.

In the 1850s-1900s, realism began to be called critical, since the main goal was to criticize what was happening, the relationship between a certain person and spheres of society. Such questions were considered as: the measure of society's influence on the life of an individual; actions that can change a person and the world around him; reason for the lack of happiness in human life.

This literary trend has become extremely popular in Russian literature, as Russian writers were able to make the world genre system richer. There were works from in-depth questions of philosophy and morality.

I.S. Turgenev created an ideological type of heroes, the character, personality and internal state of which directly depended on the author's assessment of the worldview, finding a certain meaning in the concepts of their philosophy. Such heroes are subject to ideas that are followed to the very end, developing them as much as possible.

In the works of L.N. Tolstoy, the system of ideas that develops during the life of a character determines the form of his interaction with the surrounding reality, depends on the morality and personal characteristics of the heroes of the work.

Founder of realism

The title of the initiator of this direction in Russian literature was rightfully awarded to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. He is a generally recognized founder of realism in Russia. "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin" are considered a vivid example of realism in the domestic literature of those times. Also distinguishing examples were such works by Alexander Sergeevich as Belkin's Tales and The Captain's Daughter.

Classical realism gradually begins to develop in Pushkin's creative works. The depiction of the personality of each character of the writer is comprehensive in an effort to describe the complexity of his inner world and state of mind which unfold very harmoniously. Recreating the experiences of a certain personality, its moral character helps Pushkin to overcome the willfulness of describing passions inherent in irrationalism.

Heroes A.S. Pushkin appear before readers with the open sides of their being. The writer pays special attention to the description of the sides of the human inner world, depicts the hero in the process of development and formation of his personality, which are influenced by the reality of society and the environment. This was served by his awareness of the need to depict a specific historical and national identity in the features of the people.

Attention! Reality in the image of Pushkin collects in itself an exact concrete image of the details of not only the inner world of a certain character, but also the world that surrounds him, including his detailed generalization.

Neorealism in literature

New philosophical, aesthetic and everyday realities at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries contributed to a change in direction. Implemented twice, this modification acquired the name neorealism, which gained popularity during the 20th century.

Neorealism in literature consists of a variety of currents, since its representatives had a different artistic approach to depicting reality, which includes the characteristic features of a realistic direction. It is based on appeal to the traditions of classical realism XIX century, as well as to problems in the social, moral, philosophical and aesthetic spheres of reality. A good example containing all these features is the work of G.N. Vladimov "The General and his army", written in 1994.

Representatives and works of realism

Like other literary movements, realism has many Russian and foreign representatives, most of which have works of a realistic style in more than one copy.

Foreign representatives of realism: Honore de Balzac - "The Human Comedy", Stendhal - "Red and Black", Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens - "The Adventures of Oliver Twist", Mark Twain - "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Jack London - "Sea Wolf", "Hearts of Three".

Russian representatives of this direction: A.S. Pushkin - "Eugene Onegin", "Boris Godunov", "Dubrovsky", "The Captain's Daughter", M.Yu. Lermontov - "A Hero of Our Time", N.V. Gogol - "", A.I. Herzen - "Who is to blame?", N.G. Chernyshevsky - "What to do?", F.M. Dostoevsky - "Humiliated and Insulted", "Poor People", L.N. Tolstoy - "", "Anna Karenina", A.P. Chekhov - "The Cherry Orchard", "Student", "Chameleon", M.A. Bulgakov - "Master and Margarita", "Heart of a Dog", I.S Turgenev - "Asya", "Spring Waters", "" and others.

Russian realism as a trend in literature: features and genres

USE 2017. Literature. Literary trends: classicism, romanticism, realism, modernism, etc.

REALISM (from Latin realis - material, real) - a method (creative setting) or a literary trend that embodies the principles of a life-truthful attitude to reality, striving for artistic knowledge of man and the world. Often the term "realism" is used in two senses: 1) realism as a method; 2) realism as a trend that emerged in the 19th century. Both classicism, and romanticism, and symbolism strive for the knowledge of life and express their reaction to it in their own way, but only in realism does fidelity to reality become the defining criterion of artistry. This distinguishes realism, for example, from romanticism, which is characterized by the rejection of reality and the desire to “recreate” it, and not display it as it is. It is no coincidence that, referring to the realist Balzac, the romantic George Sand defined the difference between him and herself in this way: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes; I feel a calling to portray him the way I would like to see. Thus, we can say that the realists represent the real, and the romantics - the desired.

The beginning of the formation of realism is usually associated with the Renaissance. The realism of this time is characterized by the scale of images (Don Quixote, Hamlet) and the poeticization of the human personality, the perception of man as the king of nature, the crown of creation. The next stage is enlightenment realism. In the literature of the Enlightenment, a democratic realistic hero appears, a man "from the bottom" (for example, Figaro in Beaumarchais's plays "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro"). New types of romanticism appeared in the 19th century: "fantastic" (Gogol, Dostoevsky), "grotesque" (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin) and "critical" realism associated with the activities of the "natural school".

The main requirements of realism: observance of the principles of nationality, historicism, high artistry, psychologism, the image of life in its development. Realist writers showed the direct dependence of the social, moral, religious ideas of the heroes on social conditions, and paid much attention to the social aspect. The central problem of realism is the relationship between plausibility and artistic truth. Plausibility, a plausible depiction of life is very important for realists, but artistic truth is determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehending and conveying the essence of life and the significance of the ideas expressed by the artist. One of the most important features of realism is the typification of characters (the fusion of the typical and the individual, the uniquely personal). The credibility of a realistic character directly depends on the degree of individualization achieved by the writer.

Realist writers create new types of heroes: the type of "little man" (Vyrin, Bashmachki n, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the type of "extra person" (Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), the type of "new" hero (nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev, "new people" Chernyshevsky).

Realism has the following distinctive features:

1. The artist depicts life in images that correspond to the essence of the phenomena of life itself.
2. Literature in realism is a means of a person's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
3. Cognition of reality comes with the help of images created by typing the facts of reality ("typical characters in a typical setting"). Typification of characters in realism is carried out through the truthfulness of details in the "concreteness" of the conditions of the characters' existence.
4. Realistic art is life-affirming art, even in the tragic resolution of the conflict. The philosophical basis for this is gnosticism, faith in the knowability and adequate reflection of the surrounding world, unlike, for example, romanticism.
5. Realistic art is inherent in the desire to consider reality in development, the ability to detect and capture the emergence and development of new forms of life and social relations, new psychological and social types.

In the course of the development of art, realism acquires concrete historical forms and creative methods (for example, enlightenment realism, critical realism, socialist realism). These methods, interconnected by continuity, have their own characteristic features. Manifestations of realistic tendencies are also different in different types and genres of art.

In aesthetics, there is no definitively established definition of both the chronological boundaries of realism and the scope and content of this concept. In the variety of developed points of view, two main concepts can be outlined:

· According to one of them, realism is one of the main features of artistic knowledge, the main trend of the progressive development of the artistic culture of mankind, which reveals the deep essence of art as a way of spiritual and practical development of reality. The measure of penetration into life, artistic knowledge of its important aspects and qualities, and primarily social reality, also determines the measure of the realism of this or that artistic phenomenon. In each new historical period, realism takes on a new look, either revealing itself in a more or less clearly expressed trend, or crystallizing into a complete method that determines the characteristics of the artistic culture of its time.
· Representatives of a different point of view on realism limit its history to certain chronological frames, seeing in it a historically and typologically specific form of artistic consciousness. In this case, the beginning of realism refers either to the Renaissance, or to the 18th century, to the Enlightenment. The most complete disclosure of the features of realism is seen in the critical realism of the 19th century, its next stage is in the 20th century. socialist realism, which interprets life phenomena from the standpoint of the Marxist-Leninist worldview. A characteristic feature of realism in this case is the method of generalization, typification of life material, formulated by F. Engels in relation to a realistic novel: " … typical characters in typical circumstances...
Realism in this sense explores the personality of a person in indissoluble unity with the contemporary social environment and social relations. This interpretation of the concept of realism was developed mainly on the material of the history of literature, while the first - mainly on the material of the plastic arts.

Whatever point of view one holds, and no matter how one connects them with each other, there is no doubt that realistic art has an extraordinary variety of ways of cognizing, generalizing, artistic interpretation of reality, manifested in the nature of stylistic forms and techniques. Realism by Masaccio and Piero del Francesc, A. Dürer and Rembrandt, J.L. David and O. Daumier, I.E. Repin, V.I. Surikov and V.A. Serov, etc. differ significantly from each other and testify to the widest creative possibilities for the objective development of the historically changing world by means of art.

At the same time, any realistic method is characterized by a consistent focus on cognition and disclosure of the contradictions of reality, which, within the given, historically determined limits, turns out to be accessible to truthful disclosure. Realism is characterized by the belief in the cognizability of beings, features of the objective real world by means of art. realism art knowledge

The forms and methods of reflecting reality in realistic art are different in different types and genres. Deep penetration into the essence of life phenomena, which is inherent in realistic tendencies and constitutes the defining feature of any realistic method, is expressed in different ways in a novel, a lyric poem, in a historical picture, landscape, etc. Not every outwardly reliable depiction of reality is realistic. The empirical authenticity of the artistic image acquires meaning only in unity with a true reflection of the existing aspects of the real world. This is the difference between realism and naturalism, which creates only the visible, external, and not the true essential truthfulness of images. At the same time, in order to reveal certain facets of the deep content of life, sometimes sharp hyperbolization, sharpening, grotesque exaggeration of the "forms of life itself", and sometimes a conditionally metaphorical form of artistic thinking are required.

The most important feature of realism is psychologism, immersion through social analysis into the inner world of a person. An example here is the "career" of Julien Sorel from Stendhal's Red and Black, which experienced a tragic conflict of ambition and honor; psychological drama by Anna Karenina from the novel of the same name by L.N. Tolstoy, which was torn between the feeling and morality of a class society. The human character is revealed by representatives of critical realism in an organic connection with the environment, with social circumstances and life conflicts. The main genre of realistic literature of the XIX century. accordingly becomes a socio-psychological novel. It most fully meets the task of objective artistic reproduction of reality.

Consider the general signs of realism:

1. Artistic depiction of life in images, corresponding to the essence of the phenomena of life itself.
2. Reality is a means of a person's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
3. Typification of images, which is achieved through the veracity of details in specific conditions.
4. Even in a tragic conflict, art is life-affirming.
5. Realism is inherent in the desire to consider reality in development, the ability to detect the development of new social, psychological and social relations.

The leading principles of realism in the art of the 19th century:

· an objective reflection of the essential aspects of life in combination with the height and truth of the author's ideal;
Reproduction of typical characters, conflicts, situations with the completeness of their artistic individualization (i.e., concretization of both national, historical, social signs, as well as physical, intellectual and spiritual features);
· preference in ways of depicting "forms of life itself", but along with the use, especially in the 20th century, of conditional forms (myth, symbol, parable, grotesque);
· the prevailing interest in the problem of "personality and society" (especially in the inescapable confrontation between social laws and the moral ideal, personal and mass, mythologized consciousness) [4, p.20].

Realism is a trend in literature and art, truthfully and realistically reflecting the typical features of reality, in which there are no various distortions and exaggerations. This direction followed romanticism, and was the forerunner of symbolism.

This trend originated in the 30s of the 19th century and reached its peak by the middle of it. His followers sharply denied the use of any sophisticated techniques, mystical trends and idealization of characters in literary works. The main feature of this trend in literature is the artistic depiction of real life with the help of ordinary and well-known readers of images that are part of their daily lives for them (relatives, neighbors or acquaintances).

(Alexey Yakovlevich Voloskov "At the tea table")

The works of realist writers are distinguished by a life-affirming beginning, even if their plot is characterized by a tragic conflict. One of the main features of this genre is the authors' attempt to consider the surrounding reality in its development, to discover and describe new psychological, social and social relations.

Having replaced romanticism, realism has the characteristic features of art, seeking to find truth and justice, wishing to change the world for the better. The main characters in the works of realist authors make their discoveries and conclusions after much thought and deep introspection.

(Zhuravlev Firs Sergeevich "Before the wedding")

Critical realism is developing almost simultaneously in Russia and Europe (approximately 30-40s of the 19th century) and soon emerges as the leading trend in literature and art throughout the world.

In France, literary realism is primarily associated with the names of Balzac and Stendhal, in Russia with Pushkin and Gogol, in Germany with the names of Heine and Buchner. All of them experience the inevitable influence of romanticism in their literary work, but gradually move away from it, abandon the idealization of reality and move on to portraying a wider social background, where the life of the main characters takes place.

Realism in Russian literature of the 19th century

The main founder of Russian realism in the 19th century is Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. In his works "The Captain's Daughter", "Eugene Onegin", "Tales of Belkin", "Boris Godunov", "The Bronze Horseman" he subtly captures and masterfully conveys the essence of all important events in the life of Russian society, represented by his talented pen in all its diversity. , colorfulness and inconsistency. Following Pushkin, many writers of that time came to the genre of realism, deepening the analysis of the emotional experiences of their heroes and depicting their complex inner world (Lermontov's Hero of Our Time, Gogol's The Government Inspector and Dead Souls).

(Pavel Fedotov "The Picky Bride")

The tense socio-political situation in Russia during the reign of Nicholas I aroused a keen interest in the life and fate of the common people among progressive public figures of that time. This is noted in the later works of Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol, as well as in the poetic lines of Alexei Koltsov and the works of the authors of the so-called "natural school": I.S. Turgenev (a cycle of stories "Notes of a Hunter", stories "Fathers and Sons", "Rudin", "Asya"), F.M. Dostoevsky ("Poor People", "Crime and Punishment"), A.I. Herzen (“The Thieving Magpie”, “Who is to blame?”), I.A. Goncharova ("Ordinary History", "Oblomov"), A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit", L.N. Tolstoy ("War and Peace", "Anna Karenina"), A.P. Chekhov (stories and plays "The Cherry Orchard", "Three Sisters", "Uncle Vanya").

Literary realism of the second half of the 19th century was called critical, the main task of his works was to highlight existing problems, to raise issues of interaction between a person and the society in which he lives.

Realism in Russian Literature of the 20th Century

(Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky "Evening")

The turning point in the fate of Russian realism was the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when this trend was in crisis and a new phenomenon in culture, symbolism, loudly declared itself. Then a new updated aesthetics of Russian realism arose, in which the main environment that forms the personality of a person was now considered History itself and its global processes. The realism of the early 20th century revealed the full complexity of the formation of a person's personality, it was formed under the influence of not only social factors, history itself acted as the creator of typical circumstances, under the aggressive influence of which the main character fell.

(Boris Kustodiev "Portrait of D.F. Bogoslovsky")

There are four main currents in the realism of the early twentieth century:

Critical: continues the tradition of classical realism of the mid-19th century. The works focus on the social nature of phenomena (creativity of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy);
Socialist: displaying the historical and revolutionary development of real life, conducting an analysis of conflicts in the conditions of the class struggle, revealing the essence of the characters of the main characters and their actions committed for the benefit of others. (M. Gorky "Mother", "The Life of Klim Samgin", most of the works of Soviet authors).
Mythological: reflection and rethinking of real life events through the prism of the plots of famous myths and legends (L.N. Andreev "Judas Iscariot");
Naturalism: an extremely truthful, often unsightly, detailed depiction of reality (A.I. Kuprin "The Pit", V.V. Veresaev "Notes of a Doctor").

Realism in foreign literature of the 19th-20th centuries

The initial stage of the formation of critical realism in Europe in the middle of the 19th century is associated with the works of Balzac, Stendhal, Beranger, Flaubert, Maupassant. Merimee in France, Dickens, Thackeray, Brontë, Gaskell in England, the poetry of Heine and other revolutionary poets in Germany. In these countries, in the 30s of the 19th century, tension was growing between two irreconcilable class enemies: the bourgeoisie and the labor movement, there was a period of upsurge in various spheres of bourgeois culture, a number of discoveries were made in natural science and biology. In countries where a pre-revolutionary situation has developed (France, Germany, Hungary), the doctrine of scientific socialism of Marx and Engels arises and develops.

(Julien Dupre "Return from the fields")

As a result of a complex creative and theoretical debate with the followers of romanticism, critical realists took for themselves the best progressive ideas and traditions: interesting historical themes, democracy, folklore trends, progressive critical pathos and humanistic ideals.

The realism of the early twentieth century, having survived the struggle of the best representatives of the "classics" of critical realism (Flaubert, Maupassant, France, Shaw, Rolland) with the trends of new unrealistic trends in literature and art (decadence, impressionism, naturalism, aestheticism, etc.) is acquiring new character traits. He refers to the social phenomena of real life, describes the social motivation of the human character, reveals the psychology of the individual, the fate of art. The modeling of artistic reality is based on philosophical ideas, the author's attitude is given, first of all, to the intellectually active perception of the work when reading it, and then to the emotional one. The classic example of an intellectual realistic novel is the works of the German writer Thomas Mann "The Magic Mountain" and "The Confession of the Adventurer Felix Krul", dramaturgy by Bertolt Brecht.

(Robert Kohler "Strike")

In the works of the realist author of the twentieth century, the dramatic line is strengthened and deepened, there is more tragedy (the work of the American writer Scott Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby", "Tender is the Night"), there is a special interest in the inner world of man. Attempts to portray the conscious and unconscious life moments of a person lead to the emergence of a new literary device, close to modernism, called the “stream of consciousness” (works by Anna Zegers, V. Koeppen, Yu. O'Neill). Naturalistic elements appear in the work of American realist writers such as Theodore Dreiser and John Steinbeck.

The realism of the twentieth century has a bright life-affirming color, faith in man and his strength, this is noticeable in the works of American realist writers William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Mark Twain. The works of Romain Rolland, John Galsworthy, Bernard Shaw, Erich Maria Remarque enjoyed great popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Realism continues to exist as a trend in modern literature and is one of the most important forms of democratic culture.

Within the framework of which painters and writers strive to depict reality truthfully, objectively, in its typical manifestations.

The main features that characterize realism are historicism, social analysis, the interaction of typical characters with typical circumstances, self-development of characters and self-movement of action, the desire to recreate the world as a complex unity and contradictory integrity. The fine arts of realism follow the same principles.

Hero of realism

One of the main features of every artistic method is the type of hero. Realism is a special relationship between a character and the world around him.

On the one hand, the hero of realism is a sovereign unique personality. This shows the influence of humanism and the legacy of romanticism: attention is paid not to how good a person is, but to the fact that he is unique, this is a deep independent personality. Therefore, this character cannot be identical to the author or the reader. A person, as realism sees him, is not the "second self" of the writer, like the romantics, and not a complex of some features, but someone fundamentally different. It does not fit into the author's worldview. The writer explores it. Therefore, often the hero in the plot behaves differently than the author originally planned.

Living according to his own logic of another person, he builds his own destiny.

On the other hand, this unique hero cannot be separated from the many connections with other characters. They form a unity. One hero can no longer be directly opposed to another, as Reality is depicted both objectively and as an image of consciousness. A person in realism exists in reality and at the same time - in the field of his understanding of reality. For example, let's take the landscape outside the window, which is given in the work. This is at the same time a picture from nature, and at the same time - a person's attitude, a field of consciousness, and not pure reality. The same applies to things, space and so on. The hero is inscribed in the surrounding world, in its context - cultural, social, political. Realism significantly complicates the image of a person.

in the literature of realism

Artistic activity from the standpoint of realism is cognitive activity, but aimed at the world of characters. Therefore, the writer becomes a historian of modernity, reconstructing its inner side, as well as the hidden causes of events. or romanticism, the drama of personality could be assessed from the standpoint of its positivity, to see the confrontation between the “good” hero and the “bad” world around him. It was customary to describe a character who does not understand something, but then gains some experience. In realism, the semantic whole of the work unites the world with the hero: the environment becomes a field for a new embodiment of those values that the character originally possesses. These values themselves are adjusted in the course of vicissitudes. At the same time, the author is outside the work, above it, but his task is to overcome his own subjectivism. The reader is only given an experience that he cannot experience without reading the book.