Art of the everyday : Dutch painting and the realist novel

Resource Information

The work Art of the everyday : Dutch painting and the realist novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Art of the everyday : Dutch painting and the realist novel

Title remainder

Dutch painting and the realist novel

Statement of responsibility

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Creator

• Yeazell, Ruth Bernard

Subject

• Art and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• French fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• Art and literature -- France -- History -- 19th century
• Painting, Dutch -- 17th century -- Influence
• Realism in literature
• History

Genre

• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

"Realist novels are celebrated for their detailed attention to ordinary life. But two hundred years before the rise of literary realism, Dutch painters had already made an art of the everyday - pictures that served as a compelling model for the novelists who followed. By the mid-1800s, seventeenth-century Dutch painting figured virtually everywhere in the British and French fiction we esteem today as the vanguard of realism. Why were such writers drawn to this art of two centuries before? What does this tell us about the nature of realism?" "In this book, Ruth Yeazell explores the nineteenth century's fascination with Dutch painting, as well as its doubts about an art that had long challenged traditional values." "After showing how persistent tensions between high theory and low genre shaped criticism of novels and pictures alike, Art of the Everyday turns to four major novelists - Honore de Balzac, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Marcel Proust - who strongly identified their work with Dutch painting. For all these writers, Dutch art provided a model for training themselves to look closely at the particulars of middle-class life." "Yet even as nineteenth-century novelists strove to create illusions of the real by modeling their narratives on Dutch pictures, Yeazell argues, they chafed at the model. A concluding chapter on Proust explains why the nineteenth century associated such realism with the past and shows how the rediscovery of Vermeer helped resolve the longstanding conflict between humble details and the aspirations of high art."--Jacket

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

823/.809357

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

PR878.A74

LC item number

Y43 2008

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography