SOURCE: "Realism," in A Study of Prose Fiction, Revised Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920, pp. 217-57.

In the excerpt that follows, Perry first examines the primary meanings of "realism" in both fine art and literature from the Renaissance through the twentieth century and subsequently proposes a definition of realism as an "effort to depict things as they are, life as it is."

We are to discuss in this chapter a somewhat difficult theme,—one that has long occupied the attention of the reading public, and about which all the critics, and indeed most of the novelists, have at one time or another had their say. No term dealing with literary methods has been more current than "realism," and there is none that needs a more exact analysis. In connection with all the fine arts the word "realism" is used, but we do not always use it in the same...