Conclusion: Tragic Realism and Modern Society

Abstract

The year 1848 has been acclaimed as the most significant date in modern fiction. But 1948, one hundred years later exactly, is of equal significance. The year previously, Doctor Faustus and Under the Volcano had been published. The year after saw the appearance of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the last month of that year, December 1949, is the three days’ duration of The First Circle. Between 1848 and 1948 lies the period of tragic realism in the modern novel. Before it is Stendhal, and after it Solzhenitsyn. In between is the work of Emily Bronte, Melville, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Zola, Hardy, Mann, Faulkner and Hemingway. The transformation of tragic realism in the modern theatre is delayed and less prolific. But it actually outlasts its appearance in the novel. After Ibsen and Chekhov, there is O’Casey and O’Neill and, in post-war America, Tenessee Williams, Arthur Miller and the early Edward Albee.