Looking At Fontana's Critical Realism From Effie Brest

19th-century German critical realist Theodor Fontane completed eleven novels in mere two decades."Effi Briest",one of his most representative works,is chosen as the analysis object of this paper.It is the intension of this paper to exam the manifestation of the criticism in his work,based on the critical realism theory.Due to rather late introduction to China,research on Fontane’s works has been rare.A lot of literature critics and scholars attached importance to the novel “Effi Briest”.They mainly focus on the heroine——analyzing the fate of women,or interpreting the structure of the novel.In comparison,the study on the critical consciousness of this novel,especially on the content itself,is generally neglected.Chapter one introduces the theory of critical realism and the origin of the story of this novel.Chapter two describes the reality of the 19th-century German society,on the political and social background and on the value of nobility.Chapter three,the core of the dissertation,thoroughly analyzes various aspects of Fontane’s critique.In the last chapter,it explores the reason why "Effi Briest" became a classic and how the critical features is manifested with the narrative method.