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Luc Herman: Concepts of Realism Columbia SC: Camden House, 1996. Price £40.00, 246 p.
Concepts of Realism by the Belgian literary theorist Luc Herman offers a rich and useful survey of a wide range of theories and poetological - often polemical - essays on realism; moreover, it presents some interesting new insights into the subject. Herman starts out with Gustave Coùrbet's provocative move to place the label Du Réalisme over the entrance of his 1855 exhibition, and he ends up, in his last chapter, with the manifestos of Tom Wolfe - writer of Bonfire of the Vanities (1988) - and several other discussions on American realisms. In between (there are fourteen chapters), we encounter Roman Jakobson, Georg Lukács, Erich Auerbach, Bertolt Brecht, and a rich variety of spokesmen for realism, modernism, magic realism, Marxism, structuralism, deconstruction, reader response criticism, and various other -isms.
The first chapter is limited to realist programmatic statements in nineteenth-century France, England, and Germany, The chapter's title promises a European overview; although a focus on these three countries is not uncommon in studies of realism, some defense of the choice would have been welcome. I miss discussions of realism in Norway and Spain, both of which raise some interesting issues that hardly play a role in the countries dealt with by Herman. In Norway, there is the connection with feminism and democratization; as regards Spain, the intriguing role of Catholicism there could have given another dimension to Herman's discussion of the negative moral connotations of realism. Other reviewers may miss other countries, for instance Russia. Staying with Herman's choice, we find here a clear survey of French theories, particularly those of Champfleury. In the light of Herman's own remark, that a statement by Guy de Maupassant in its "simplicity might be worth more than the entire theoretical work of Champfleury and Duranty" (18) we may even find too much of Champfleury. For England, Herman concentrates on George Eliot; as regards to Germany, he probes the German .use of the terms "realism" and "poetic realism". I may add one more critical note here: Herman relies too much on secondary literature here and he goes too seldom back to the original texts. In this respect, the first chapter shows traces of the early...