Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Activity 23.1
Unit 23 Narrative realism
Section 5 Narrative

The aim of this activity is to analyse two pieces of visual narrative and to identify the markers of realism and non-realism.

1 Choose two pieces of narrative, one that you would identify as an example of realism and the other an example of non-realism. Your two pieces should be from the same medium (from a novel, a short story, television, film, video, comic strip, photo-reportage, etc.). You will need to look closely and repeatedly at the texts, so if you choose a moving image you will probably need to have it on videotape.

2 Here is a reminder of some features that have been claimed to be characteristic of various different sorts of realist texts (for more detail see the unit):

✵ the subject matter is generally drawn from ’everyday’, ’ordinary’ life;

✵ the characters are ordinary people presented as complex individuals who are shown to be capable of change and development;

✵ there is a moral position from which the events are viewed;

✵ there is a consistent point of view from which the events are evaluated (there may be more than one but they are consistent);

✵ the narrator presents a non-contradictory reality;

✵ the narrator does not draw attention to him- or herself;

✵ the language used in the narrative does not draw attention to itself;

✵ events are arranged in roughly chronological order (there may be flashbacks, but the sequence of events is clear);

✵ the narrative reaches a clear resolution;

✵ there is detailed description of material objects (clothes, faces, furniture, etc.);

✵ there are realist operators (the inclusion of arbitrary details);

✵ the narrative includes an appeal to the cultural code (views that we are all supposed to share).

3 Examine the ’realist’ text, and check which of these characteristics are present. Add any other general characteristics of realism that occur to you as you examine the text.

4 Now examine the ’non-realist’ text and check which of these characteristics are absent. Cross off the list any characteristics that this examination suggests might be characteristic of all texts (not just realist ones).

5 For the two texts you have chosen, what are the reasons you might suggest for each text drawing on or rejecting the conventions of realism?

Notes

1 It should be noted that ’ordinary’ here can often turn out to refer to middle-class characters, since most novels revolve around bourgeois characters. Although there is a tradition of working-class writing where the central characters are members of the working classes, generally even now it is the middle class who are mostly represented as the ’ordinary’ and therefore universal individual.

2 These problems with the nature of ’reality’ largely stem from theoretical work that questions the sense of a pre-existent reality to which all individuals have the same access and apprehension. Theorists who have questioned this notion of a pre-given, agreed-upon reality that pre-dates our own individual experiencing and apprehension of it are Berger and Luckman (1966) and Michel Foucault, most notably in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1989) and The Order of Things(1970).

Reading

Barthes, R. (1986) The Rustle of Language, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 141-8.

Leech, G. and Short, M. (1981) Style in Fiction, London: Longman, pp. 150-70.

Lodge, D. (1977) The Modes of Modern Writing, London: Arnold, Chapter 3, ’Realism’.

Mills, S. and Pearce, L. (1996) Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading, 2nd edn, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, especially chapter on ’Authentic Realism’.

Toolan, M. (2001) Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.