ABSTRACT
Realism' is a term often employed - although hardly ever defined - in discussions about the conny-catching pamphlets. One has the impression that the definition of the conny-catching pamphlets as 'realistic' is based on a set of naive considerations. In the first place, on the preconceived belief that the settings and the characters which they present really existed and that the facts which they recount really happened in the time and place in which they are said to have existed and to have happened. In the second place on the fact that their authors (or rather, narrators) invariably declare that they are reporting the truth, often adding that it is a truth which they have personally witnessed. The modern and post-modern practice or quotation as well as of allusion are in principle and in theory acquitted from the charge of plagiarism because their intent is thought to be conscious and their effects consciously planned and recognizable.
