Some statements about realism for my introduction

In many works specifically tackling realism, it may be difficult to actually maintain a grasp on the term itself.  Some critics might off-handedly refer to realism and assume a reader's working knowledge of it that exactly coincides with his or hers [examples??].  A reader's confusion of criticism derives mostly from the fact that there are, in the history of literary criticisms and critics, competing definitions of realism.  Harry E. Shaw in Narrating Reality: Scott, Austen, and Eliot, does a particularly good job of exploring what realism meant to a handful of major critics, from canonized relics such as Barthes and Lukacs to contemporary critics such as Colin MacCabe and Lennard Davis.  Levine, upon whom I rely heavily, also gets a brief mention in realism's critical history, but only to the point of being named as against the naivete traditionally associated with realism.  At the end of his introduction, he says, "My categorization of these critiques of realism suggests a fundamental question: How could any mode of representation attract such utterly divergent views, not simply about its merits, but about its fundamental character?" (Shaw 30). 

Another important point Shaw takes the time to make is that throughout the history of realism's criticism, VALUE has continually associated with its definition.  Shaw's intent in arguing this may be to take himself out of the very debate about which he writes, but that seems impossible.  A defense of realism still permeates his writing, very much in the way I have tried to defend popular fiction here.  break the cycle!

This project does not wish to establish "the" definition of realism, to argue for one version over another, but rather to explore