French Literature: From Realism to Magical Realism

https://doi.org/10.22146/poetika.v8i2.58651

Ali Shahab(1*), Faruk Faruk(2), Arif Rokhman(3)

(1) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(2) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(3) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract


The purpose of the article is to explore the evolution of French literature between the late 19th century and early 21st century. Although French literature has long been dominated by rationalistic ways of thinking, based on the thoughts of René Descartes and John Locke, authors have used different means to express their perceptions of society. The novel Madame Bovary (1856), including its depiction of conjugal relationships, can be considered to have pioneered realism in French literature. During the Second World War, existentialism and absurdism appeared as new ways of examining not only the relationship among humans, but also between humans and God. In the late 20th century, magical realism emerged as a new literary stream that explicitly recognized the irrationality of human thinking. This article finds that the rationality of realism was necessary for magical realism to be accepted; in this rationality, although works of magical realism were irrational, they had to be recognized as fine examples of French literature that embodied such revolutionary ideas as liberté (liberty), égalité (equality), and fraternité (fraternity). To study this phenomenon, we examine the history of french literature by applying archeological method in order to understand the world views of the authors and how they change over time.

Keywords


Realism; Existentialism; Magical Realism; French; Literature

Full Text:

PDF


References

Becker, George J. (1982). Realism in Modern Literature. California: Frederick Ungar Publishing.

Becker, George J. (1982). Realism in Modern Literature. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing.

Ben Jelloun, Tahar. (1985). L’Enfant de sable. Paris: Èditions du Seuil.

Ben Jelloun, Tahar. (1987). La nuit sacrée. Paris: Èditions du Seuil.

Bryant, Christopher G. A. (1985). Positivism in Social Theory and Research. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Camus, Albert. (1941). L’Etranger. France: Gallimard.

Camus, Albert. (1942). Le mythe de sisyphe, Essai sur l’absurde. France: Gallimard.

Flaubert, Gustave. (1856). Madame Bovary. Paris: Revue de Paris.

Foucault, Michel. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge). Paris: Gallimard.

Hadimaja, Aoh K. (1972). Aliran Klasik, Romantik dan Realisme. Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya.

Hatfield, Gary. (1993). Historical Roots of Cognitive Science: The Rise of a Cognitive Theory of Perception from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Theo C. Meyering. Philosophy of Science, 60(4), 662–666. https://doi.org/10.1086/289768

Hatfield, Gary. (2008). Descartes: A Biography; Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes. Isis, 99(1), 177–178. https://doi.org/10.1086/589357

Hatfield, Gary. (2013). Russell’s Progress: Spatial Dimensions, the From-Which, and the At-Which. In D. Emundts (Ed.), Self, World, and Art: Metaphysical Topics in Kant and Hegel (pp. 321–44). De Gruyter. Retrieved from https://philarchive.org/rec/HATRPS

Kelly, Jill. (1991). Photographic Reality and French Literary Realism: Nineteenth-Century Synchronism and Symbiosis. The French Review, 65(2), 195–205. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/395589

Lagarde, A., & Michard, L. (1966). XIXe siècle: Les Grands Auteurs français du programme—Anthologie et Histoire littéraire (Français). Paris: Les editions Bordas.

Masci, David. (2019, February 6). The History of The Evolution Debate in the United States. Retrieved August 9, 2020, from Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewforum.org/essay/darwin-in-america/

Pramudita, Kanya. (2013). Resistensi Kritik dalam L’Homme Rompue Karya Tahar Ben Jelloun. [Master Thesis, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta].

Rehandini, Ajeng. (2015). Transformasi Karakter dalam Novel dan Film Madame Bovary (Character Transformasi in Madame Bovary Novel and Film) (Universitas Gadjah Mada). [BA Thesis, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta]. Retrieved from http://digilib.fib.ugm.ac.id/book/detail/10674

Sartre, Jean P. (1943). L’Etre et le néant. Paris: Librairie Gallimard.

Sartre, Jean P. (1946). L’existensialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Edition Nagel.

Spear, T., & Litherland, C. (1993). Politics and Literature: An Interview With Tahar Ben Jelloun. Yale French Studies, (83), 30–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930086

Stendhal. (1830). Le Rouge et Le Noir. Paris: Levrasseur.

Stendhal. (1839). La Chartreuse de Parme. Paris: Livre de Poche.

Tang, Shiping. (2017). Toward Generalized Evolutionism: Beyond “Generalized Darwinism” and Its Critics. Journal of Economic Issues, 51(3), 588–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2017.1353871

Udasmoro, Wening. (2012). Kebebasan dan Ketidakbebasan dalam Cerita Pendek “Tembok” Karya Jean-Paul Sartre Kajian Sosiologi – Hegemonis. Humaniora, 10(1), 53–59. https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.609

Udasmoro, Wening. (2015). Paradoksalitas Pemosisian Perempuan dalam Novel Colomba Karya Prosper Mérimée. Jurnal Kawistara, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.22146/kawistara.6399

Udasmoro, Wening, & Shahab, A. (2013). Kontestasi Ideologi dalam Sastra Prancis Masa Perang Dunia Kedua. LITERA, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.21831/ltr.v12i02.1549

Uzgalis, W. L. (1988). The Anti-Essential Locke and Natural Kinds. The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), 38(152), 330–339. https://doi.org/10.2307/2220132

Uzgalis, W. L. (2017). Locke, John. In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory (pp. 1–2). American Cancer Society. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0483

Watt, Ian. (1982). Litérature et Réalité. Paris: Edition de Seuil.

Young, Robert J.C. (2005). White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London and New York: Routledge.



DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/poetika.v8i2.58651

Article Metrics

Abstract views : 4523 | views : 3135

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Copyright (c) 2020 Jurnal POETIKA

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

ISSN 2503-4642 (online) | 2338-5383 (print)
Copyright © Poetika: Jurnal Ilmu Sastra under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

free web stats View My Stats