Ian Aitken
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719070006
- eISBN:
- 9781781700884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719070006.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter describes the model of aesthetic realism developed by the Hungarian theorist György Lukács, and sets out the parameters of a Lukácsian theory of cinematic realism. It discusses one of ...
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This chapter describes the model of aesthetic realism developed by the Hungarian theorist György Lukács, and sets out the parameters of a Lukácsian theory of cinematic realism. It discusses one of the most trenchant criticisms levelled against Lukács: that the model of realism is umbilically associated with a particular form of literature: the nineteenth-century realist novel. As a consequence of this concentrated focus, the chapter dismisses some of the most vital artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including naturalism, and most forms of modernism. It establishes the link as to how Lukács appropriated the nineteenth-century realist tradition and examines the two central aspects of Lukács's theory: the notion of alienation and the model of the intensive totality. Lukács's writings on cinematic realism are also considered and contradicted for the type of naturalist/impressionist realism.Less
This chapter describes the model of aesthetic realism developed by the Hungarian theorist György Lukács, and sets out the parameters of a Lukácsian theory of cinematic realism. It discusses one of the most trenchant criticisms levelled against Lukács: that the model of realism is umbilically associated with a particular form of literature: the nineteenth-century realist novel. As a consequence of this concentrated focus, the chapter dismisses some of the most vital artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including naturalism, and most forms of modernism. It establishes the link as to how Lukács appropriated the nineteenth-century realist tradition and examines the two central aspects of Lukács's theory: the notion of alienation and the model of the intensive totality. Lukács's writings on cinematic realism are also considered and contradicted for the type of naturalist/impressionist realism.
