English Literature / Unit 15 ENL 1440 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Realism and the Victorian Novel
Captions available
The idea
Literary realism represents familiar things and everyday experience as they truly are, rejecting Romantic idealization. George Eliot's Adam Bede defends "the faithful representing of commonplace things," and the anchor calls realism the hallmark of Victorian prose.
In practice
Ordinary life, faithfully shown.
Where people slip
Realism has a moral purpose in Eliot.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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