Realist Vision [Hardcover]

Professor Peter Brooks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2005

Realist Vision explores the claim to represent the world “as it is.” Peter Brooks takes a new look at the realist tradition and its intense interest in the visual. Discussing major English and French novels and paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Brooks provides a lively and perceptive view of the realist project.
Centering each chapter on a single novel or group of paintings, Brooks examines the “invention” of realism beginning with Balzac and Dickens, its apogee in the work of such as Flaubert, Eliot, and Zola, and its continuing force in James and modernists such as Woolf. He considers also the painting of Courbet, Manet, Caillebotte, Tissot, and Lucian Freud, and such recent phenomena as “photorealism” and “reality TV.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brooks makes these authors come alive. Reading about them and their work is like reading a good novel. This is a culminating text by a real pro, in the best sense of the word. It comes from the heart, but there are years of scholarly work and critical engagement behind it.”—Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts

“Brooks makes these authors come alive. Reading about them and their work is like reading a good novel. This is a culminating text by a real pro, in the best sense of the word. It comes from the heart, but there are years of scholarly work and critical engagement behind it.”—Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts

(Linda Nochlin )

"A fine new book. . . . [An] excellent book."—James Wood, New Republic

(James Wood New Republic )

"A lively and perceptive view of realism in literature, and in particular its emphasis on the visual."—Andrew Starner, The American Scholar

(Andrew Starner The American Scholar )

Book Description

In this lively book, Peter Brooks offers a distinctive view of realism in great modern novels and art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He examines the invention of “reality” beginning with Balzac and Dickens and the legacy of this invention both in literature (Woolf, Joyce, Proust) and visual works (Manet, Tissot, Lucian Freud).

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300106807
• ISBN-13: 978-0300106800
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,689,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent way to enter realist art and litterature, January 11, 2007

By 

Casa Do Estoril Lda (Lisboa, Portugal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Realist Vision (Hardcover)

This is an excellent analysis of realism in the 19th century European painting and novel. The author shows a wide knowledge in several fields, allowing him to give a cult and wide overview of the topics covered. His several analysis of specific paintings and novels adds to the depth and leaves aside any fear that the reader may have of general and repeated ideas, so common in other books. It is refreshing to see an English-speaking author dealing with books in an idiom other than English (French in this case). Nevertheless, some references to other national realist oeuvres (Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Scandinavian...) would further enrich the book.
The only flaw of the book - its loose structure, without helpful overview of the subject and a clear conclusion - may also be seen as an advantage of allowing the author a more wandering and enriching reflexion than one can find in a lot of academic-burocratic studies.
The book includes 36 figures. I plan to quote this book in my academic research and recommend it to students in university.
Eduardo Cintra Torres

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Realist Vision, February 24, 2006

By 

Janis C. Stair "J. Stair" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Realist Vision (Hardcover)

As an art history student, I found this book very helpful in writing a paper on realism in art and literature in late nineteenth century Paris. Professor Brooks writes in a beautiful, concise way; my understanding of a fascinating subject and time period has been greatly increased.