Type, Totality, and the Realism of Asian American Literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23169447 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yoon Sun Lee (0000-0001-8229-9955, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 415-432 |
| Publication date | 2012-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Language Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-7929 • E-ISSN: 1527-1943 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00267929-1631460 |
| OpenAlex | W2158333917 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
This essay examines how the concept of realism applies to minor literature by retrieving and expanding Georg Lukács’s understanding of realism as the deliberate negation of modernism. In Lukács’s view, realism distinctively expresses an aspiration to totality. Its most important device is typicality, which claims to broaden the significance of what might seem merely particular. This definition of realism illuminates two pioneering works of Asian American literature. Jade Snow Wong and Maxine Hong Kingston, despite their many differences, both engage in the realist project of overcoming reified particulars. They invent techniques to mediate and thereby to connect isolated acts, events, and persons to a total context of social life.
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Negation · Realism · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Latin American and Latino Studies · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |