George Eliot's Epic Syntax: History and Totality in Middlemarch by Thomas A. Laughlin

Through a claim that George Eliot’s sentences mark a move in realism toward “epic syntax” that glimpses the particularities of capitalist social relations, Thomas Laughlin argues that what is particular about Eliot’s literary form — and perhaps realist fiction more broadly — is not only mimetic, but formal.

In order to counter the claim that both of the novels he examines are “clinging to the supposedly naïve projects of literary mimesis and socialist commitment,” Jacob Sloan posits that such criticisms naïvely equate formal sophistication with political sophistication.

The Historical Novel in Peru: José María Arguedas’ Yawar Fiesta by Ericka Beckman

Attending to the ambitions of the realist mode, Ericka Beckman explores the different ways realism registers uneven development at different moments within the history of capitalism. Ultimately, she claims that Peruvian José Maria Arguedas’ realist form articulates “how indigenous people and belief systems” are “subject to historical transformation” brought on by capitalism.

Prolegomena: Prospective Realism in a Present Without Future by Mathias Nilges

Investigating the realist form from within a crisis of futurity, Mathias Nilges asserts that capitalist realism is not necessarily the “exhaustive foreclosing” of possibility many have understood it to be. Rather, the new realist forms of the past decade might better be understood as opportunities to critique such a view through what he calls a “prospective realism.”

Climate Realism, Capitalist and Otherwise by Anna Kornbluh

Through an analysis of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 alongside Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism, Anna Kornbluh asserts that even if the content of Robinson’s novel has much of the mimetic trappings of realism, its form does not. Building on this dialectical tension, Kornbluh asks whether or not capitalist realism is “mood, or mode?”

Interpretation without Method, Realism without Mimesis, Conviction without Propositions by Nicholas Brown

Nicholas Brown suggests that the prominent Brazilian literary critics Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz extend Georg Lukács conception of realism, with implications not only for literary interpretation but for the “cognitive dignity” of art.