THE POETICS OF REALISM AND THAT OF SOCIALIST REALISM

Abstract

When discussing the poetics of realism, we consider the fact that the indisputable dominant literary genre is the novel which, since the 18th century, in the context of  romantization, turned out to be a suitable form for expressing the basic contradiction of romantization, the one between  the individual and  the community, where the hero is a direct expression of the archetype of the  romantic individual. Later, in the nineteenth century, the novel became the main literary genre in Western literature as well, which, through the development of the psychological novel (the non-psychological, pre-psychological novel, is only a form of epic or satire) becomes an expression of the individualist vocation characterizing western civilization, when the latter has finally passed from the traditional (holistic) society to modern (individualist) society. Even in the poetics of socialist realism, the novel remains the most favorite lyrical genre (in addition to poems and lyrical poetry) being directly linked to the base  paradigm of the communist regime, which was the creation of a 'New Man’.