Critical approaches to literary realism

Abstract

The inquiries regarding the concept of realism tend to result in an attempt to define the ontological statutes that govern the referential plausibility constituted in literary works. We can presume as inadequate this way of understanding Realism as an ontological statute of mimetic plausibility of actual history, after an analysis of the antecedents of this notion —including the oldest in Plato and Aristotle until the emergence of the theories of reflection inspired, first of all, by German idealism and then by Marx's aesthetics—. This is remarkable, especially when we want to explain the immanent realism constituted in literary fiction, considering outlines of technically impossible, paradoxical or absurd worlds. This article aims to offer some alternative cues that help to set apart this concept from those in which the illusion of reality has been limited to an equivocal sentence that maintains the literary aesthetic value in the author's ability to reflect or, if appropriate, allegorically represents the reality of his time.

Keywords

• realismo
• mímesis
• realidad inmanente
• inteligencia autoral
• mundos posibles