What Do We Know? Reconsideration of Victorian Realism and Epistemological Doubt

Abstract

AbstractThis essay traces what might be called an epistemology of realism: the attempt to gather empirical evidence about the world, to then selectively represent that evidence so as to make the others we encounter as intelligible as possible, but all the while acknowledging, implicitly or explicitly, that such complete knowledge is unattainable. In this way, realism continually comes up against its own epistemological endeavors. In what follows, I take a brief look at definitions, both conventional and troubling, of realism, the historical context out of which realism developed, and the historical trajectory of the 20th‐century criticism about realism. I then examine some of the more recent work on realism, focusing in particular on the trend of viewing realism in relation to epistemology. I conclude by performing two short readings of realist novels that utilize this epistemological lens in order to illustrate how this way of reading realism not only underscores some of the tough epistemological questions that realist writers grappled with but also draws our attention to texts previously defined as outside of the realist paradigm.