GCSE English Literature · key term

Realism

Definition

A literary approach that represents recognisable everyday lives, social relationships and material circumstances.

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Paper 2

A literary approach that represents ordinary lives, social relationships and motives in convincing detail.
Eliot’s realism appears in the details of work, food, households and local habits, and in her explanations of motives. An omniscient narrator, able to describe several characters’ thoughts, helps readers see beyond village gossip and outward appearances. The novel’s prose gives space to these explanations and to the distinctive speech of its villagers.
Revise: Context
Writing that represents recognisable everyday life through convincing social, material and psychological detail.
Revise: Writer's methods

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Paper 1

A dramatic form that presents recognisable settings, believable relationships and speech resembling everyday conversation.
Revise: Racism and class in 1980s Britain

Component 2

A literary approach that represents recognisable everyday lives, social circumstances and believable human motivations.
Eliot shares Wordsworth’s interest in the value of ordinary country lives. Her realism appears in the detailed work, homes, speech and motives of people who might otherwise be dismissed as insignificant. Yet the novel also has the shape of a legend: a wronged outsider loses gold, gains a golden-haired child and finds belonging.
Revise: Context
Revise: Plot overview
The representation of ordinary lives, work, relationships and social conditions in convincing detail.
Revise: Chapters 4 to 10: the stolen gold

3 more notes

Writing that presents recognisable everyday life, social circumstances and psychologically complex characters.
Revise: Chapters 19 to 21 and the Conclusion
A literary approach that represents ordinary lives through detailed social settings, believable behaviour and complex motivations.
Revise: Silas Marner
A literary approach that represents recognisable everyday life through convincing social, material and psychological detail.
Revise: Writer's methods