ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses the concept of realism that thereby emerges is always that with which modernism has had to break, that norm from which modernism is the deviation, and so forth. The proof of this assertion may be found in the peculiar fact that whenever you search for 'realism' somewhere it vanishes, for it was nothing but punctuation, a mere marker or a 'before' that permitted the phenomenon of modernism to come into focus properly. While the use of twentieth-century concepts may illuminate the 'modernity' of realist texts in unexpected ways, it often has two effects. By showing that the realist novelist invents, neither Honore de Balzac nor George Eliot undermine their own literary practice. Moreover, reflexivity does not merely confirm the aesthetic status of realist texts but it actively reflects on the conditions of their production.
