Reviewed by: Realism, Form, and Representation in the Edwardian Novel: Synthetic Realism by Charlotte Jones Adam Grener Realism, Form, and Representation in the Edwardian Novel: Synthetic Realism. By Charlotte Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2021. xxvi+ 303 pp. £75. ISBN 978-0-19-885792-1. Charlotte Jones's book makes a rich contribution to a revivified critical discourse around literary realism by examining the philosophical import and aesthetic ambitions of an undertheorized period of the British novel. Realism, Form, and Representation in the Edwardian Novel explores how key figures at the start of the twentieth century—Joseph Conrad, May Sinclair, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Ford Madox Ford—negotiate the competing demands of particularity and totality [End Page 130] that define the poles of realist representation. The subtitle, 'Synthetic Realism', names these writers' attempts to probe the ineffable metaphysical underpinnings of reality through a patterning and organization of the empirical. This term—and the book's methodology—draws on the conflicting philosophical meanings of 'realism': whereas realism was long tied to Platonic notions of universal but non-substantial forms, during the eighteenth century it came to denote a material world independent of but known through perception. While theories of realism are often oriented by questions of empiricism, referentiality, or mimetic fidelity, 'synthetic realism' turns our attention to the metaphysical dimensions of realist practice. Jones does not wish to limit synthetic realism as a mode of knowing to a defined period or historical situation, but her Introduction does explain why Edwardian writers were particularly preoccupied with using language to grasp the unrepresentable. In addition to inheriting a realist tradition that had become characterized by naturalism's analytical dissection of material reality, these writers were also responding to an environment of renewed scientific and philosophical interest in the invisible that was generated by (among other things) the discovery of radioactivity, the birth of quantum physics, and the flourishing of mysticism and occultism. Some of these writers actively engaged with contemporary philosophical developments and responded to them in their reflections on narrative technique. Chapter 2, for example, reads Sinclair's Divine Fire (1904) and The Creators (1910) against the neo-Hegelian idealism of T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley to show how Sinclair's representation of empirical reality moves towards the linguistic realization of an unconscious unity that structures experience. Writing about the ineffable is not for the timid, and Jones is aware of sometimes straying into 'overwhelmingly abstract philosophical discussion' (p. 9). When these discussions do arise, however, they are usually conducted with an inviting clarity, and readers who might feel uneasy in this philosophical territory should still come to understand why it matters to realism. The most generative insights of the book are tied to its sustained attention to the dynamics of 'narrative movement' (p. 121) and 'internal textual processes' (p. 189). Realism is not simply about the relationship between the particulars of the world and the language that represents them, but about how representation organizes those particulars and—as these chapters show—the process of that organization. The first chapter, for example, illustrates how Conrad's language generates chains of metonymic association that move towards universal truths before interrupting the processes of allegorization and symbolization, while the third chapter argues that the dense accumulations of detail in Bennett's pre-war novels create patterns that cannot directly represent the order that subtends experience but can constitute that 'order occurring' in the temporality of narrative form (p. 154). Through readings of key novels such as Nostromo (1904) and The Good Soldier (1915), Jones addresses the philosophical significance of important aspects of realist representation, from metonymy and free indirect discourse to questions of genre and convention. The fourth chapter's account of the generic instability of Tono-Bungay (1909), for example, argues that Wells's realism aims to capture the [End Page 131] conditions of society but also to extend the temporal horizon of the present into an undetermined future where latent utopian possibilities might performatively emerge. As the final chapter unpacks the philosophical grounds of Ford's literary impressionism, it highlights the value of synthetic realism for both theorizing the realist aesthetics of the Edwardian novel and...
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Jun 28, 2024
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