Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- 14 Post-Revolutionary Novels
- 15 Private Pain and the Public Temper: The Personal Novel and Beyond
- 16 Between Romance and Social Critique: Staël and Women Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 17 French Realism and History
- 18 Law and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- 19 Colonial Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- 20 French-Canadian Novels from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- 21 Gender and the Novel from Sand to Colette
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
17 - French Realism and History
from Part III - After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Conventions
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: From the Late Medieval to Madame de Lafayette
- Part II The Eighteenth Century: Learning, Letters, Libertinage
- Part III After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
- 14 Post-Revolutionary Novels
- 15 Private Pain and the Public Temper: The Personal Novel and Beyond
- 16 Between Romance and Social Critique: Staël and Women Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 17 French Realism and History
- 18 Law and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- 19 Colonial Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- 20 French-Canadian Novels from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- 21 Gender and the Novel from Sand to Colette
- Part IV From Naturalism to the Nouveau Roman
- Part V Fictions of the Fifth Republic: From de Gaulle to the Internet Age
- Index
- References
Summary
The realist novel can be understood to bear witness to a changed understanding of history, ushered in with the modern era. This chapter argues that the French realist novel grew out of the historical novel, insofar as it attempted to offer a history of the present. However, a history of the present is challenging if not impossible to write because of the difficulty, and even the impossibility, of achieving a sufficiently distanced vantage point. French realist novels, consequently, aim to represent present reality but indirectly suggest the impossibility of any such representation. The chapter goes on to show that the French realist novels of the 1830s draw attention to the changeable nature of the present, partly because of the unstable social and political contexts of nineteenth-century France, and partly because of a shift in the way that people conceived of present reality. In at least two broad and closely interconnected senses, therefore, the early French realist novel is profoundly historical in its ambitions: it aims to offer a history of the present, however flawed that attempted history necessarily is, and it reveals the historical, or mutable, qualities of the present that it attempts to capture.
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- The Cambridge History of the Novel in French , pp. 309 - 325Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021