... novels—and in nineteenth-century realism in general—are identified with empirical observation and scientific objectivity. However, for Eliot, the representation of details signifies the advent of a modern subjectivity that closely attends to details and infuses them with emotion and significance. I trace...

..., and theorizing what is being represented, essay-like. By treating the protagonist as an occasion to foreground syntax’s active building and abstracting, Miss Brown ’s prose partakes in the kind of literary practice that has recently been described as nonmimetic realism—realism that does more than denote...

... realism as a form whose ontology draws upon what already exists, as a character might be drawn from a preconceived type, I contend that George Eliot’s approach to character is productive of categories and, with them, new senses of the real. This essay tracks Middlemarch ’s use of a device that I call...

... to epistemology, but also to ethical relations and practical life. The important role that trust plays in everyday life also poses relevance to our understanding of realist representation. Using Bleak House as its novelistic example, this essay considers realism as a mode that achieves its effect by inviting...

... and right knowledge. © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California 2014 Harriet Martineau Deerbrook gossip epistemology realism Harriet Martineau s Epistemology of Gossip K R I S T E N A . P O N D When Harriet Martineau published Deerbrook in 1838, her first and only work...

... critics typically complain—"mechanical" plot devices, "two-dimensional" characterization, and obtrusions of tone and style—are, this essay argues, intentional distortions of realism designed to draw attention to the consequences of industrialization. In a crucial scene, Tess Durbeyfield is enslaved...

...Melanie V. Dawson This essay argues that María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's 1885 novel The Squatter and the Don combines elements of realism and sentimentalism, articulating a realist mode of sympathy that is directed toward the novel's Californio characters. As U.S. citizens who are dispossessed...