O realism, the predominant aesthetic movement in the western world in the last quarter of the 19th century, emerged as a wave of opposition to subjectivity and individualism of the previous artistic trend, the romanticism. With the intention of making art a trustworthy representation and believable reality, writers, painters, sculptors, musicians and playwrights privileged objectivity in their works, attentive to the veracity of everyday situations.
See too: Parnassianism, poetry movement in the late 19th century
Historical context of realism
Madame Bovary, novel by Gustave Flaubert, published in 1857, is considered by literary critics to inaugural work of realistic movement. This year, I died Auguste Comte, founder of philosophy positivist, by now quite popular in Europe.
O positivism comtean had a great influence on the works of realism and on the thought of the time in general: it was a scientific worldview, which proposed that the apprehension of reality should be objective, empirical, as in the analysis procedures of the natural sciences. Progress, the greatest ideal of the positivists, would only come through science.
The European continent was experiencing the arrival of Second Industrial Revolution, who carried a urbanization mass, as well as strenuous working hours and a disorderly growth of cities, in addition to the dirt from factory production residues. O technological leap associated with industrial development provided several discoveries and inventions that changed the way citizens lived, such as the light bulb, the radio, and the modern gasoline-powered automobile.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
It was at this time that Charles Darwin published your book The origin of species (1859), whose evolutionary theory influenced several areas of knowledge, including literature. The idea that living beings go through a process of natural selection, which determines the species that survive and those that are extinct, has extended to the dimension of human relationships: it is called social Darwinism.
This conception ranks societies, identifying Europeans as intellectually superior thanks to technological and cultural development, unlike other societies, such as peoples Amerindians and the African continent, reinforcing, with a “scientific” content, the notion of “primitive” and “civilized” that already existed in the Eurocentric mentality for many centuries.
Another theory in vogue at the time was the scientific determinism, who understood that human behavior is determined by environmental conditions, another prejudiced thought at the service of social stratification.
children of your time, the realists embraced science as a great patron of the 19th century, replacing the idealizations and desires for freedom of the romanticism for a scientific analytical posture, dissecting the reality that was seen constantly transformation.
Realism Features
- Appreciation of objectivity and facts;
- Impersonality, erasure of the author's ideas;
- Descriptions of social types or typical situations;
- End of idealizations: portraits of adultery, misery and social failure;
- Prevalence of the forms of the novel and the tale;
- Frequent criticisms of the hypocrisies of the morality of the new ruling class, the bourgeoisie;
- Acceptance of reality as it is, as opposed to the romantic longing for freedom;
- Aestheticism: cultured and stylized language, written with proportion and elegance;
- Attempt to explain the real, often resorting to science or determinism;
- The characters' psychological approach as a composition of the reality they see.
Read too: Second phase of Brazilian modernism: the resumption of realism
realism in europe
Born in France, heir to the novels of Balzac and Stendhal, realism consolidated itself as a literary movement based on the work of Gustave Flaubert. Flaubert is considered the father of realism. Your Madame Bovary (1857) was a scandal at the time, as it centered the plot on Emma, a dreamy girl who hoped to find in marriage her great fulfillment in life, but, on marrying Charles Bovary, he quickly became disenchanted with the marriage and with the mediocrity of the boy, a young surgeon with no talents and mentality. obtuse.
At long descriptions by Flaubert, very detailed and in language worked with exceptional care, reveal Emma in search of something that interests her, which leads her to games of seduction and adultery. It is a desecration of marriage as the meeting of souls of romantic love.
In Portugal, it is understood that the movement began in 1865, with the Questão Coimbrã, which begins with a preface to the romantic Feliciano de Castilho eagerly criticizing the new literary trend that appeared in the poetry of Antero de Hot. For him, the new generation lacked common sense and good taste.
Antero de Quental, in turn, responded in an open letter, in defense of freedom of expression and the existence of the new school. Castilho did not respond; Ramalho Ortigão took his pains, and the story ended in a duel, won by Antero de Quental (who barely knew how to hold a rapier). The Coimbrã Question appeared in pages and pages of the Portuguese press, working as a watershed of literature, as realism also became the winning aesthetic trend from then on.
The main novelist of Portuguese realism was HeyinQueires, who in addition to being a writer was a diplomat, having traveled to various places, such as Cuba, Egypt and North America. His work can be divided into three phases: a preparatory one, composed mostly of productions published in the press (1866-1867) and some texts still from romantic stamp; one of acute realism, when he writes the great critical novels the crime of priest Amaro (1875/1876/1880), cousin Basil (1878) and the Mayans (1888); and one of maturity, characterized by a nostalgic humanism, when he published The illustrious house of Ramires (1900) and The city and the mountains (1901).
![Eça de Queiroz is the most renowned Portuguese realist.[1]](/f/90423c5f179fe2f2dc08c1aa610e9e77.jpg)
The main characteristic of Eça de Queirós is his work with thelanguage. “On the strong nudity of truth, the diaphanous cloak of fantasy” is one of his famous phrases, and reflects the care with which he dedicated himself to the stylization of his prose. The vulgar or often degrading scenarios of realism are brought to light through a luminous, rhythmic description, made with care. See an example:
“After the first despair, outbursts with kicking on the floor and blasphemies for which he immediately asked our Lord Jesus Christ's forgiveness, I wanted to calm down, to establish the reason for things. Where was that passion taking him? To scandal. And so, married she, each one entered into his legitimate and sensible destiny—she in his family, he in his parish. Then, when they met, a kind greeting; and he could walk the city with his head straight, unafraid of the asides of the Arcade, the insinuations of the gazette, the severity of his excellency and the pricks of conscience! And his life would be happy. "No, by God!" his life couldn't be happy without her! The interest of visits to the Rua da Misericordia, the handshakes, the hope of better delights, having been removed from his existence—what was he left with? Vegetating, like one of the tortulhos in the dank corners of the Cathedral! And she, who had made him dizzy with her little eyes and her little ways, turned her back on him as soon as another appeared, good for a husband, with 25$000 a month! All those sighs, those color changes — pun! Mangara with the parish priest!"
(Eça de Queiroz, the crime of priest Amaro)
In the excerpt above, the author describes the events that take place right after Father Amaro learns that Amelia, a girl with whom he was involved, breaking her celibacy, had arranged to marry João Edward. THE language cadence it is beautiful and orderly, worked diligently, describing in detail the parish priest's thought, from the concern with his position in the Church to the “pricks in his conscience”.
In the context of European realism, the works of the English Charles Dickens, George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary A. Evans) and Henry James; from the norwegian Henrik Ibsen; from swedish August Strindberg; and the russians Fyodor Dostoevsky, levTolstoy and AntonChekhov.
Read too: Manuel Antônio de Almeida: a romantic with realistic characteristics
Realism in Brazil
While the European movement was guided by changes in industrial advance, which was already reaching its second stage, Brazil, in turn, began a slow modernization process, hampered by Rancid colonial which remained in the policy of the second reign and in the maintenance of the workforce slave. Mostly, Brazilian realist writers were republicans and abolitionists, often addressing these ideals in his works.
Brazilian realism begins with the northeastern literary circles: first in Fortaleza (CE), with the groups Fênix Estudantil (1870), Academia Francesa (1872) and Bakery Spiritual (1892), which generated famous authors such as Capistrano de Abreu, Rodolfo Teófilo, Paula Nei, among others. Also in the 1870s, the so-called Recife School emerged, an intellectual movement from Pernambuco led by Tobias Barreto and Sílvio Romero, great influencers of national realist thought.
The three main names in Brazilian realism are Maranhense Aluisio Azevedo, the carioca Machado de Assis and the angrense Raul Pompeia. If you want to delve deeper into this topic, go to: Realism in Brazil.
Aluisio Azevedo
Aluisio Azevedo, however, differs from the other two by its trend aesthetic. naturalist. A literary current founded by the French Émile Zola, which, although it resembles realism and intends an objective view of reality, has its own characteristics: no Naturalism prevail the animal descriptions of the human personality, the pathological approach of the characters, the emphasis on instincts, perversions and sexual behaviors, as well as the explanation of the facts supported by the scientific determinism. It is the case of works pension house (1883) and the tenement (1890), famous productions by Azevedo.
In the following excerpt, the author narrates the dawn in the tenement. The characterization of men and women as males and females, clustered in a "zunzum", wetting their fur, as well as the choice of the verbs "fossando and sniffling" and the children "displacing themselves right there", without using the latrines, refers to human behavior related to excrescences, a natural element that we approximates the animal life.
“After a while, around the spouts there was a growing buzz; a tumultuous agglomeration of males and females. One after another washed their faces, uncomfortably, under the trickle of water that was running down from a height of about five palms. The ground flooded. Women already needed to tuck their skirts between their thighs so as not to get them wet; you could see the toasted nakedness of their arms and neck, which they stripped off, hanging their hair all the way up to the top of their hulls; the men, these did not bother not to wet their fur, on the contrary, they stuck their heads well under the water and rubbed their nostrils and beards vigorously, snagging and sniffing against the palms of their hands. The latrine doors did not rest, it was an opening and closing of every moment, a relentless coming and going. They didn't linger inside and were still tying their pants or skirts; the children didn't give in to the
work to go there, they went right there, in the back grass, behind the inn or in the corner of the gardens.”
(Aluísio Azevedo, the tenement)
Raul Pompeia
Another is the universe of Raul Pompeia, author who died prematurely, leaving few works alive. Your most acclaimed novel, the athenaeum (1888), written in the first person, is about Sérgio's memoirs, which recalls the teenage period in which he attended boarding school. As an adult, the narrator-character is confused and rebels because of the inability to modify the past, or to react in another way.
The oppressive universe of the school shows Sérgio an infinity of new existences, unknown to his domestic experience — each character is a social type, a caricature, from director Aristarco, whose sole interest is profit, to Franco, boy forgotten by his parents, who did not pay for the school, causing him to suffer persecution from students and masters.
At narrative techniques from Pompeii bring the form of the text closer to the form of the memory itself: smoky, uncertain, interrupted, while the language is also very expressive; some critics consider that there are traces of impressionism and expressionism at work. However, perhaps the big news is the presence of homo-affectiveness in the new relationships that life at school unfolds, a theme that appears several times throughout the novel, revealing a socially ignored and purposefully hidden practice: that of homosexual relationships between boys in boarding school.
The following is an excerpt that illustrates the words of director Aristarchus when intercepting a letter from one student to another, also revealing the moral condemnation the one who was subjected to homosexual practice at the time:
“I have a sad soul. Sirs! Immorality has entered this house! I refused to give credit, I surrendered to the evidence... [...] A comic letter and an appointment in the Garden. A paper is in my power, monstrous body of crime! Signed by a woman's name! There are women in the Athenaeum, my lords!” It was a letter from Candide, signed Candida. ‘This woman, this courtesan speaks to us about the safety of the place, the peace of the forest, the solitude of two... a poem of little shame! What I have to do is very serious. Tomorrow is the day of justice! I present myself now to say only: I will be inexorable, formidable! And to prevent: anyone who is directly or indirectly involved in this misery... [...] he will be considered an accomplice and as such: punished! [...] Aristarchus boasted of the insight of an inquisitor.”
(Raul Pompeia, the athenaeum)
Machado de Assis
![Machado de Assis is an exponent of Brazilian literature.[2]](/f/08d7eabd5176b742213eae7a98cf0f75.jpg)
Machado de Assis, in turn, is acclaimed as the greatest brazilian writer of all time, mainly because of the wealth with which he explores the techniques narratives and for the accurate portrayal of the human psyche. Author of novels, short stories, chronicles, plays and literary and theater criticism texts, as well as poetry, your realistic prose, which earned him the post of glory in Brazilian literature, began to be produced from 1870 onwards.
In direct but elaborate language, Machado's works lead to reflection based on everyday scenes. It's not the story that presents itself as new, but the way of narrating. Generally, the characters and situations are banal, but the way Machado reports them brings with it the ingenious novelty: it is a realism that takes into account the psychological condition of the characters as the way they apprehend reality.
In this way, reality, the raw material of realist aesthetics, is not made only of facts, but of how people perceive these facts. Thus, Machado's narrative is full of interferences, thought streams, memoirs, digressions of all kinds, which approximates prose to the way the mind actually works.
Machado also owns a peculiar mood and of a subtle irony, present in much of his work, giving critical situations a certain lightness, and he makes frequent use of the metalanguage, that is, it refers to the preparation of the book in the book itself, as in the following example:
"I came... But not; let us not lengthen this chapter. Sometimes I forget to write, and the pen eats up paper, to my serious prejudice, as I am an author. Long chapters are better suited to heavy readers; and we are not a folio audience, but in-12, little text, wide margin, elegant type, golden cut and vignettes... No, let's not lengthen the chapter.”
(Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas)
realism summary
- Realism was an aesthetic school with expressions in various fields of art, such as literature, plastic arts and dramaturgy;
- It appeared in the second half of the 19th century, in opposition to the aesthetics of romanticism;
- He valued objectivity, the factual and everyday situations;
- It intended to expose the facts as they are, without idealizations;
- In literature, the realist genre par excellence was prose;
- The great names of European realism are: Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky;
- Great names in Brazilian realism are: Aluísio Azevedo, Raul Pompeia, Machado de Assis.
solved exercises
1) (Enem 2013)
Chapter LIV - The pendulum
Get out of there to savor the kiss. I couldn't sleep; I stretched out on the bed, sure, but it was the same as nothing. I listened to all hours of the night. Usually, when I lost sleep, the swing of the pendulum made me very ill; that grim, slow, dry ticking seemed to say with each blow that I was going to have an instant less life. I then imagined an old devil, sitting between two sacks, the one of life and the one of death, and counting them like this:
Another minus...
Another minus...
Another minus...
Another minus...
The most unique thing is that, if the clock stopped, I wound it so that it would never stop beating and I could count all my lost moments. There are inventions that change or end; the same institutions die; the clock is final and perpetual. The last man, as he bids farewell to the cold and worn sun, must have a watch in his pocket, to know the exact time when he dies.
That night I didn't have that sad feeling of boredom, but another, and a delightful one. The fantasies tumultuous inside me, they came one after the other, like devotees who run into each other to see the angel-singer of the processions. I didn't hear lost, but the minutes gained.
ASSISTANCE M Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1992. (Fragment)
The chapter presents the moment in which Brás Cubas relives the feeling of the kiss exchanged with Virgília, who is married to Lobo Neves. In this context, the clock metaphor deconstructs certain romantic paradigms, because
a) the narrator and Virgília have no perception of time in their adulterous encounters.
b) as “dead author”, Brás Cubas recognizes the futility of trying to follow the flow of time.
c) in counting the hours, the narrator metaphorizes the desire to triumph and accumulate wealth.
d) the clock represents the materialization of time and redirects the idealistic behavior of Brás Cubas.
e) the narrator compares the duration of the kiss's flavor to the perpetuity of the clock.
2) (FGV-SP) In the novel the tenement, Aluísio Azevedo establishes a strong connection between the environment in which the characters live and their material, moral and psychological lives. This relationship is based on the principles
a) of religious free will.
b) of scientific determinism.
c) of romantic sentimentality.
d) the cult of nature.
e) of the modernist ideals.
3) (PUC-RS) About the athenaeum, by Raul Pompéia, it is correct to state that:
a) presents all the characteristics of realism, except the influence of the environment on the individual's behavior.
b) its raw material is the memories and impressions of the main character.
c) constitutes a photographic document of objective reality.
d) follows a chronological order based on the real.
e) does not limit himself to critical reflections regarding the social context.
4) (Enem 2001) In the excerpt below, the narrator, when describing the character, subtly criticizes another period style: romanticism.
“At that time she was only about fifteen or sixteen; she was perhaps the boldest creature of our race, and certainly the most willful. I don't say that the primacy of beauty already fell to him, among the young ladies of the time, because this is not a novel, in which the author gilds reality and closes his eyes to freckles and pimples; but I don't say that any freckles or pimples marred his face either. She was beautiful, fresh, came out of the hands of nature, full of that spell, precarious and eternal, which the individual passes to another individual, for the secret purposes of creation. "
ASSIS, Ax de. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. Rio de Janeiro: Jackson, 1957
The sentence in the text in which the narrator's criticism of romanticism is perceived is transcribed in the alternative:
The)... the author gilds reality and closes his eyes to freckles and pimples...
B)... he was perhaps the boldest creature of our race...
c) she was beautiful, fresh, came out of the hands of nature, full of that spell, precarious and eternal...
d) At that time he was only about fifteen or sixteen years old...
and)... the individual passes to another individual, for the secret purposes of creation.
Commented resolution:
- Alternative d: The presence of the clock, an instrument in which time appears in a way objective, undoes the idealistic or subjective feeling of time common to romantic paradigms when it comes to the description of a romantic encounter.
- Alternative B: Aluísio Azevedo was heavily influenced by scientific determinism, who understood that the environment in which a given person lives directs his behavior.
- Alternative B: The novel is written in the first person and consists of the narrator-character Sergio's remembrance exercise, now an adult, about his years in high school.
- Alternative The: Overgilding reality means idealizing, precisely what the author doesn't want to do.
Image credits
[1] Public domain/National Library of Portugal
[2] Public domain / Marc Ferrez
by Luiza Brandino
Literature teacher
In the excerpt below, the narrator, when describing the character, subtly criticizes another period style: romanticism.
“At that time she was only about fifteen or sixteen; she was perhaps the boldest creature of our race, and certainly the most willful. I don't say that the primacy of beauty already fell to him, among the young ladies of the time, because this is not a novel, in which the author gilds reality and closes his eyes to freckles and pimples; but I don't say that any freckles or pimples marred his face either. She was beautiful, fresh, came out of the hands of nature, full of that spell, precarious and eternal, which the individual passes to another individual, for the secret purposes of creation. "
ASSIS, Ax de. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
Rio de Janeiro: Jackson, 1957.
The sentence in the text in which the narrator's criticism of romanticism is perceived is transcribed in the alternative:
The)... the author gilds reality and closes his eyes to freckles and pimples...
B)... she was perhaps the boldest creature of our race...
c) It was beautiful, fresh, it came out of the hands of nature, full of that precarious and eternal spell, ...
d) At that time I was only about fifteen or sixteen...
and)... the individual passes to another individual, for the secret purposes of creation.
On Realism, check the INCORRECT alternative.
a) Realism emerged in Europe as a reaction to Naturalism.
b) Realism and Naturalism have the same bases, although they are different movements.
c) Realism emerged as a consequence of nineteenth-century scientism.
d) Gustave Flaubert was one of the forerunners of Realism. wrote Madame Bovary.
e) Emile Zola wrote thesis novels and influenced Brazilian writers.
