ABSTRACT
The trend of modern thought toward empiricism, materialism, pragmatism, naturalism came to a head a generation ago when two schools of philosophers all but agreed: the so-called "New Realists" and the so-called "Critical Realists". V. L. Parrington broadened the area of agreement by applying the term "critical realism" to the recent period in American literature. Yet even there the realism seems to be a matter of degree, varying with choice of subject and emphasis on detail. Art has continually adapted itself to man's changing conceptions of reality — that is to say, his successive adjustments to society and nature. Yet an art which must submit itself, either to production codes or party lines, is basically unrealistic. The medium that most completely mirrors the increasing stature of the middle class has been, of course, the major vehicle of literary realism, the novel. Nonetheless realism, heralded by romanticism and continued by naturalism, has been the animating current of nineteenth-century literature.
