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Realism, as a literary concept, has prevailed since humans have attempted to faithfully record impressions received through the five senses. The object of realism, now as in the past, is to provide a vicarious experience of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings described so that readers can be fully involved in a fictional story that could plausibly happen in real life.

Writer. Born in the working-class neighborhoods of Florence, Italy, on October 19, 1913, Vasco Pratolini was raised amid the difficult economic circumstances that plagued Italy between the two World Wars. He lived with his maternal grandmother after the death of his mother when he was quite young. Pratolini left home entirely at thirteen and supported himself with a variety of menial jobs, all the while maintaining a voracious love of reading and introducing himself to a wide range of classic literature from Dante to Charles Dickens. By the early 1930’s, Pratolini, like many of his generation, enthusiastically endorsed the emerging Fascist government of Mussolini, embracing its sweeping promises of working-class improvements along with its vision of a renaissance in the arts. He began to write strident newspaper articles about the Fascist revolution, establishing himself among the emerging intelligentsia.

Hardboiled fiction is a form of American detective fiction characterized by its use of grittiness, violence, and realism. The genre, which reached its zenith between 1925 and 1940, was initially created as a response to the refined style of British murder mysteries epitomized by such authors as Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers in the 1920s. The term "hardboiled" is in reference to the toughness of a hardboiled egg, which is equated to the hard edge of the settings and characters featured in these novels. Typically, hardboiled novels are darker in tone than earlier detective novels, and they present the investigating detective's personal thoughts about ongoing events rather than just simply relating the details of the crime as they are uncovered.

Stegner is an acknowledged master of both the novel and short-story forms, and “The Blue-Winged Teal” is often cited as one of his best stories. “The Blue-Winged Teal” fits squarely into the tradition of American realism. It deals with ordinary events among ordinary people.

Italian neorealism is a gritty, realistic style of filmmaking that developed in Italy after World War II (1939–1945). Neorealist films were generally shot in black and white using actual locations and nonprofessional actors. Their subject usually focused on the struggles of people experiencing poverty and the working class in post-war Italy. The style was both an artistic rejection of traditional studio cinema and necessitated by a lack of resources after the war. Italian neorealism existed for less than a decade and was not popular with moviegoers; however, the genre was acclaimed by critics and was highly influential on future filmmakers. Among the most noteworthy neorealist directors were Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica, whose 1948 film Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) is considered a cinematic masterpiece.

In March, 1913, Marcel Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way, 1922), the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927; Remembrance of Things Past, 1922-1931, 1981), was published by Bernard Grasset at the author’s expense after being rejected by several publishers. This work, with its fluid, overwrought style, mystified many readers who perhaps expected another effort from Proust in the manner of Les Plaisirs et les jours (1896; Pleasures and Regrets, 1948), a whimsical collection of poems and sketches.

*Paris. France’s capital and leading city, which in the first part of the novel is a place of fantasy, an ideal. At the beginning of the second part of the novel, when Lucien and Madame de Bargeton actually arrive in the capital, it initially seems to live up to its promise. In fact, it seems so luxurious, magnificent, and bustling that both Lucien and Madame de Bargeton feel like backward provincials. Soon, however, Lucien finds himself in sordid lodgings that seem little different from what he has left behind in L’Houmeau. Later still he discovers that behind its glittering facade Paris is full of corruption and intrigue. This seems different from the world he left behind, but not necessarily better.

Mid-nineteenth century Russia witnessed an artistic and literary movement that embraced realism in representation. The members of the Russian intelligentsia who adhered to this approach were the products of a half-century of cultural, political, and social upheaval that shook the very foundation of the Russian nation. At the beginning of the century, Czar Alexander I had flirted with the Enlightenment ideal of liberalism as expressed in the political concepts of constitutional monarchy and the abolition of serfdom. Many of the bright and talented young members of his officer corps believed the adoption of the Enlightenment worldview was the best way to initiate the reforms necessary to modernize Russian society. However, the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic Wars brought twenty-five years of chaos and destruction to most of Europe and created a conservative backlash that was especially strong in Russia’s ruling Romanov dynasty.

Born of powerful currents of social, scientific, and political change in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, literary realism represented the revolutionary concept that life as it was lived by ordinary people was not only worth investigating, but also worth recording. Until that point, art had served largely to portray the singular and exotic, most often the rich and the powerful, in elegantly wrought prose or poetry. Realism—a movement of an international coterie of novelists, painters, poets, playwrights, and journalists—upended traditional notions of worthy artistic subjects, arguing that art and literature should commit itself to the accurate portrayal of the sufferings and the joys of the everyday in an immediately accessible and direct manner.