A Contemporary Representation of Reality: the Hysterical Realist Novel

Abstract

Literary critics are faced with the difficult task of categorizing a wide corpus of contemporary narratives that have conquered the hearts of millions of readers worldwide, through their sardonic way of representing today’s reality and their particular interpretation of the novel’s traditional form. It is the case of hysterical realist novels, a new literary genre that constitutes the object of this present study, which explores the main aspects of this type of narratives by considering their perspective of the world and their means of achieving the effect of reality. The research commences with an overview of the main theories that have shaped literary realism as we know it today, with a primary emphasis on the reader-response approach and its corresponding methods. The textual analysis employs some of these theories in order to discuss why hysterical realist novels fail to convince the readers of their verisimilitude, despite of the fact that their stories comply with the laws of logic and plausibility. One of the main findings highlights the idea that fulfilling the condition of truthfulness within the internal world of the novel does not guarantee a realist actualization of the text, as the reader fails to displace the presented facts within his own observed reality. This is the result of an overuse of reality, as these novels display complicated webs of events that incorporate a large quantity of interconnected characters, in this way trying to accomplish their task of pinning down the latest cultural tendencies of today’s constantly changing society. The research also offers the perspective of hysterical realist authors on the form of the contemporary novel, and discusses the way in which these authors reinterpret the traditional function of paratextual elements in order to reinforce their authority as reliable sources of knowledge.