Realism

Realism is an artistic movement that took shape in the mid-nineteenth century and set as its aim the truthful, comprehensive depiction of reality in its typical manifestations, in the lawful connections between the human being and the social milieu. The Realists strove for objectivity, social analysis, and the psychological authenticity of characters, for showing 'typical heroes in typical circumstances'. World models are the novels of Honoré de Balzac (The Human Comedy), Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy. In Ukrainian literature Realism reached a high level in social-psychological prose: the novels of Panas Myrny (Do the Oxen Low When Mangers Are Full?), the tales of Ivan Nechui-Levytsky (Kaidash's Family), the many-sided work of Ivan Franko (the Boryslav cycle, the novel Crossing Paths), and the dramaturgy of the 'theater of the luminaries' — Ivan Karpenko-Kary — which deeply analyzed the social contradictions of Ukrainian life.