Realist Fiction and the Strolling Spectator

In response to post-structuralist criticism of the classic realist text as an unsophisticated, reactionary form, John Rignall makes the most powerful case yet for the rehabilitation of realism as a self-aware and reflexive genre. Using the novels of Scott, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, James, Ford, and Conrad, Rignall argues for a new understanding of realism through the recurrent figure of the "flaneur" . The (usually male) "flaneur" was the strolling spectator whose problematic vision both of and in the novel makes him the representative figure of the realist novel. His act of looking implicitly questions the seemingly sovereign gaze and apparent epistemological premises of the realist writer. "Realist Fiction and the Strolling Spectator" presents a major re-evaluation of realist texts that should be of interest to students and scholars alike.