Abstract

Realist Fiction and the Strolling Spectator offers a fresh view of works from the realist canon by examining the central issue of 'seeing' in the figure of the strolling spectator. The spectating figure illustrates the central importance of seeing in the practice of realism and the spectator's perspective is subtly related to those of the novelist and the reader. Using Walter Benjamin's reflections on the flaneur and Nietzsche's definition of modern man as a 'strolling spectator' of history, the study brings out the problematic nature of the fictional spectator's vision and relates it to both the reflexive and the referential dimensions of realism, showing how it implicitly questions the seemingly sovereign gaze and apparent epistemological premises of the realist writer and at the same time throws light on the commodified urban culture in which the realist novel is implicated. Realist fiction thus emerges as more self-aware and more searching than dismissive definitions of the 'classic realist text' would allow. Focusing on selected passages from works by a wide range of authors, including Scott, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, George Eliot, James, Ford and Conrad, the book provides a fresh view of the realist canon and the transition to modernism which will send the reader back to familiar novels with new insight.