American Literature / Unit 12 AML 1104 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Frank Norris and "A Plea for Romantic Fiction"
Captions available
The idea
Norris argued that the novelist should go past the drawing-room accuracy of realism to the extremes where life is lived hardest, calling that reach romance rather than realism. The essay is the naturalists' defence of melodrama, violence and appetite as legitimate subjects.
In practice
A plea to look where it is worst.
Where people slip
His word romance means intensity, not escape.
Your place on the trail
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Builds on
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