The article elaborates on features of the realist novel and questions interpretations of the so-called "reality effect" offered by 19th and 20th century literary critics. The author claims that this effect, far from beign a mere result of the "descriptive excess" typical of writers such as Dostoiévski and Flaubert, manifests a social opening of the novel to a new sensibility, a less aristocratic and more democratic one.
Realist novel; reality effect; Roland Barthes; literature and democracy