In this excerpt from "Criticism and Fiction", Howells talks about the writing of realists, and also about Jane Austen. He talks of some of the criticism her writing and writings like it have taken, but he says that realistic writings of nature are beautiful, and that fictional writings should be criticized instead. He talks about how the writers thought that they were better than the realist writings for using the characters in certain ways to do certain things, but he believes that it is harder to write a realistic story, and if it is done, then the story will be much better. He says that he has started to see a recovery in England from all the fictional writing that has happened.
One thing he says is that the men have been trained to think that whatever they like is good, and no longer to think in the opposite order (in that we no longer like what is good, we say it is good because we like it). This relates to us still today. People will be offended, shocked, and etc if you don't appreciate what they like. People expect other people to like what they like and dislike what they dislike, not to like what is good and dislike what is bad.
Why is fictional writing "bad"?
This is vague and inaccurate--make sure you're reading carefully and planning your responses!
ReplyDelete