Rendering French Realism

Realist novels are usually seen as verisimilar representations of the world, and even when that verisimilitude is critically examined (as it has been by Marxist and feminist critics), the criticism has referred to extra-literary matters, such as bourgeois ideology or defects in the portrayal of women.

This book takes as its thesis that the point defining realism is the point at which the processes of representation break down, a sort of black hole of textuality, a rent in the tissue.

The author argues that our notions of continuity, of readability, of representability, or our ideas about unity and ideological shift or even our notions of what is hidden, occulted, or absent all come from the nineteenth-century realist model itself.

Instead of assuming representability, the author argues that we should look at places where the texts do not continue the representationalist model, where there is a sudden falling off, an abyss.

Instead of seeing that point as a shortcoming, the author argues that it is equal to the mimetic successes of representation.