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A Literary Review of Neorealism in British and American Literature

Received: 11 April 2022     Accepted: 25 April 2022     Published: 12 May 2022
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Abstract

In the wake of postmodernism, writers sit at an anxious crossroads where the language representation of postmodernism meets the lyrical realism of Balzac and Flaubert, and a few critics have attempted to anchor a realist grounding for the new directions of novels. In this sense, the appeal of the return of realism is recognized as congenial to experimental realism—neorealism, embodying experiments in forms, styles, and modes of valuing, with mimesis dominant. Entering the 21st century, neorealism has won certain celebrations from some Chinese scholars, but its descriptions, designations, and practices in British and American literature display some confusion and ambiguity that revolve around the present studies of neorealism in China. This paper, thus, aims to solve these questions by exploring its cause and effect, and pointing out the research gap between foreign scholars and Chinese, likewise with an attempt to provide an individual but academic description of this new form. It concludes that neorealism is a new form of realism in the postmodern context, integrating the self-consciousness of modernism and language dominant of postmodernism, with an attempt to articulate and evaluate the relationships between the individual self and “signified” social reality in the textualized world. In the postmodern context, multiple worlds are textualized in fiction and the reality is not absolute but the “signified” one understood by the majority. The major concerns of British neorealism fiction reside more in “self” due to its British tradition of (liberal) humanity, different from American neorealism with politics dominant.

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 10, Issue 3)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13
Page(s) 166-174
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Neorealism, Neorealism in Britain and America, Neorealism in China

References
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[2] Furst, Lilian R. “Realism and Its ‘Code of Accreditation’.” Comparative Literary Studies. 2. 2 (1988): 101-26.
[3] Yang Jincai, Wang Shouren. Research on the Postwar World Process and the Process of Foreign Literature Volume 4, Research on the Development Trend of Foreign Literature in the New Century. Yi Lin Press, 2019.
[4] Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. Columbia University Press, 1961.
[5] Wolfe, Tom. “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Manifesto for the New Social Novel.” Harper’s Magazine (1985): 45-56.
[6] Franzen, Jonathan. “Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels.” Harper’s Magazine (1996): 35-53.
[7] Reed, T. V. “Unimagined Existence and the Fiction of the Real: Postmodernist Realism in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” Representations, no. 24 (1988), 156–176.
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[9] Elias, Amy J. “Meta-mimesis? The problem of British Postmodern Realism.” British. Postmodern Fiction (1993): 9-31.
[10] Fluck, Winfried. Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. Kristaan Versluys. Rodopi, 1992, 65-85.
[11] Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. University of Chicago Press, 1993.
[12] Thornton, William H., and Songok Han Thornton. “Toward a Cultural Prosaics: Postmodern. Realism in the New Literary Historiography.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 26.4 (1993): 119-142.
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[14] Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. Routledge, 1898.
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[17] McLaughlin, Robert L. “Post-postmodern discontent: Contemporary Fiction and the Social. World.” Symplokē 12.1/2 (2004): 53-68.
[18] Hou Weirui. The History of Modern British Fiction. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1985.
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[20] Guo Jide. “The Neorealist Tendency in Contemporary American Literature.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 4 (1997): 147-150.
[21] Guo, Jide. “A Review of Post-War American Literature.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 3 (2000): 134-140.
[22] Yin Qiping. “Calling Neorealism: A Review of Williams’ View of Novels.” Foreign Literature 5 (1997): 64-72.
[23] Zhong Ming. “An Analysis of British Postmodern Realism Fiction.” Foreign Literature Studies 1 (1999): 38-43.
[24] Yu Jianhua. “Death and Birth: Sinclair Lewis Research and the Trend of Contemporary Literature.” Foreign Literature 4 (2004): 77-82.
[25] Wang Shouren, and Tong Qingsheng. “Recalling and Understanding Imaginary Knowledge: On American Postmodern Realist Novels.” Foreign Literature Review 1 (2007): 48-59.
[26] Jiang Tao. “The New Realism Horizon of Contemporary American Fiction.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 4 (2007): 115-121.
[27] Teng Xueming. “An Analysis of American Postmodern Realism Novels.” Journal of Xi’an International Studies University 2 (2009): 66-69.
[28] She Jun, and Zhu Xinfu. “Characters and Characterization in American Neorealist Fiction.” Contemporary Foreign Literature 2 (2013): 127-135.
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[30] Luo Xiaoyun. Beyond Postmodernism: A Study of Neorealism in America. Peking University Press, 2012.
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  • APA Style

    Wang Cong. (2022). A Literary Review of Neorealism in British and American Literature. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 10(3), 166-174. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13

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    Wang Cong. A Literary Review of Neorealism in British and American Literature. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2022, 10(3), 166-174. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13

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    AMA Style

    Wang Cong. A Literary Review of Neorealism in British and American Literature. Int J Lit Arts. 2022;10(3):166-174. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13,
      author = {Wang Cong},
      title = {A Literary Review of Neorealism in British and American Literature},
      journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
      volume = {10},
      number = {3},
      pages = {166-174},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20221003.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20221003.13},
      abstract = {In the wake of postmodernism, writers sit at an anxious crossroads where the language representation of postmodernism meets the lyrical realism of Balzac and Flaubert, and a few critics have attempted to anchor a realist grounding for the new directions of novels. In this sense, the appeal of the return of realism is recognized as congenial to experimental realism—neorealism, embodying experiments in forms, styles, and modes of valuing, with mimesis dominant. Entering the 21st century, neorealism has won certain celebrations from some Chinese scholars, but its descriptions, designations, and practices in British and American literature display some confusion and ambiguity that revolve around the present studies of neorealism in China. This paper, thus, aims to solve these questions by exploring its cause and effect, and pointing out the research gap between foreign scholars and Chinese, likewise with an attempt to provide an individual but academic description of this new form. It concludes that neorealism is a new form of realism in the postmodern context, integrating the self-consciousness of modernism and language dominant of postmodernism, with an attempt to articulate and evaluate the relationships between the individual self and “signified” social reality in the textualized world. In the postmodern context, multiple worlds are textualized in fiction and the reality is not absolute but the “signified” one understood by the majority. The major concerns of British neorealism fiction reside more in “self” due to its British tradition of (liberal) humanity, different from American neorealism with politics dominant.},
     year = {2022}
    }
    

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Author Information
  • Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

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