ABSTRACT
Defoe also pioneered realism in sexual life, for presumed didactic purposes. The chronotope of early 18th-century England is widely associated with the rise of the modern realist novel and, though it is much less known was central for that of theatrical realism. The realism of Defoe or Richardson was not something completely different from a previous, supposedly unrealistic prose but, rather, represented a new vision about what counts as realistic representation. The realism of new kind of theatre should be called sentimental realism, using the term Empfindsamkeit, a term championed by Lessing through his German translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journeys. Bourgeoisie and capitalism for people, after Marx and Weber, are inseparably connected, twin aspects of the same process, a process that the rise of the novel was supposed to reflect. The effects of Garrick's theatre were manifold. Most directly, it transformed English theatre into a desert, where no plays of any significance would be produced during his reign.
