Metafiction as Reality Effect: Trollope's Quixotism and Novel Theory

Critics agree that Don Quixote helped originate realism, but its influence on nineteenth-century novels has been widely misunderstood. Realist Quixotism, usually assumed to oppose book and world, in fact models a dynamic imbrication of fictionality and reality. Thus, it helps bridge the normative an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inELH Vol. 89; no. 4; pp. 1077 - 1105
Main Author Romanow, Jacob
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2022
Subjects
19th century
Culture
Fiction
Flaubert, Gustave (1821-1880)
French literature
Metafiction
Novels
Postmodernism
Realism
Trollope, Anthony (1815-1882)
Utopias
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Summary:Critics agree that Don Quixote helped originate realism, but its influence on nineteenth-century novels has been widely misunderstood. Realist Quixotism, usually assumed to oppose book and world, in fact models a dynamic imbrication of fictionality and reality. Thus, it helps bridge the normative and utopian functions of literary realism. This concept of realism is both exemplified and theorized by Anthony Trollope's novels, which insist on the mutual construction of literary and social convention. Their metaleptic narration, Victorian marriage plots, and use of the everyday illustrate how metafictionality, counterintuitively, can help construct a sense of the realistic.
ISSN:0013-8304
1080-6547
1080-6547
DOI:10.1353/elh.2022.0037