I
In literature, the theory or practice of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization of everyday life.
The 18th-century works of Henry Fielding , and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic program in France in the mid-19th century, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society; Gustave Flaubert 's Madame Bovary (1857) established the movement in European literature. The realist emphasis on detachment and objectivity, along with lucid but restrained social criticism, became integral to the novel in the late 19th century. The word has also been used critically to denote excessive minuteness of detail or preoccupation with trivial, sordid, or squalid subjects. See also naturalism .
II
In philosophy, any viewpoint that accords to the objects of human knowledge an existence that is independent of whether they are being perceived or thought about.
In the metaphysical debate concerning universal s, realism is opposed to nominalism, which denies that universals have any reality at all (except as words), and to conceptualism, which grants universals reality but only as concepts in the mind. Against idealism and phenomenalism , realism asserts the independent existence of material objects and their qualities . Similarly, moral realism holds that the moral qualities of things and actions (such as being good or bad, right or wrong) belong to the things or actions themselves and are not to be explained in terms of the subject's feelings of approval or disapproval. In opposition to conventionalism, realism holds that scientific theories are objectively true (or false) based on their correspondence (or lack of it) to an independently existing reality.
III
In the visual arts, an aesthetic that promotes accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life.
Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of close observation of outward appearances. It was a dominant current in French art between 1850 and 1880. In the early 1830s the painters of the Barbizon school espoused realism in their faithful reproduction of the landscape near their village. Gustave Courbet was the first artist to proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic; his Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers (1849) shocked the public and critics with their frank depiction of peasants and labourers. In his satirical caricatures, Honoré Daumier used an energetic linear style and bold detail to criticize the immorality he saw in French society. Realism emerged in the U.S. in the work of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins . In the 20th century German artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit worked in a realist style to express their disillusionment after World War I. The Depression-era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similarly harsh realism to depict the injustices of U.S. society. See also naturalism .
IV
[c mediumvioletred] (as used in expressions)
magic realism
magical realism
New Realism
Photo Realism
{{link=Social Realism">Social Realism
Socialist Realism