| This thesis develops and refines a term used initially by Bill Buford to refer to works of contemporary realism. Dirty realism characterises a strain of realism first appearing in American and Canadian writing during the 1960s and increasing in prominence through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. The study focuses on the scholarship surrounding both the term and the works of particular authors, and applies the theories of Fredric Jameson and Michel de Certeau to develop a basic critical vocabulary for engaging the fiction and poetry of Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Mark Anthony Jarman, as well as other writers treated with less intensity, such as David Adams Richards, Helen Potrebenko, Al Purdy, and Bobbie Anne Mason. In particular, the dissertation attempts to develop a critical terminology through which to discuss dirty realist texts. The most prominent of such terms, the "hypocrisy aesthetic," refers to dirty realism's aesthetic of contradiction, discursive variance, and offsetting of theory against practice. The chapters of the dissertation deal with the emergence of the hypocrisy aesthetic through a study of literary genealogy, history, and theory.;The second chapter, "Dirty Realism: Genealogy," traces the development of major currents in twentieth-century American realism, particularly naturalism. Arguing for dirty realism as a variant of naturalism, the chapter traces the transmission of ideas concerning dialectics, determinism, and commodity production from Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, through James T. Farrell and John Steinbeck and ending with an extensive discussion of Charles Bukowski's Factotum.;The third chapter, "Dirty Realism: History;" addresses the impact of the Cold War on the development of dirty realism. Referring to major critics on the period, this section of the dissertation follows the development of hypocrisy as a form of discourse eventuated by Cold War contradictions, particularly between that of democratic freedoms proclaimed abroad and the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia on the domestic scene (as---in the USA---in the HUAC hearings chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy).;The fourth chapter, "Dirty Realism: Theory," relies primarily on Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life to develop a model of dirty realism's operative tactics in the context of postmodern society. While Jameson envisions postmodernity as an inescapable cultural field absorbing all forms of alternative resistance, de Certeau envisions a way of operating within such a condition by appropriating elements and forms from the dominant system itself. With reference to Carver, Bukowski, Ford, and Jarman, this chapter investigates the isolation that results from the hypocrisy aesthetic, and examines the attempts these authors make either to guarantee themselves positions of liberty at the expense of communal co-operation or projects, or to critique such a position as a hindrance to finding solutions to the social atomisation that results from the Cold War and the "postmodern condition.";"Towards a Definition of Dirty Realism" attempts to situate dirty realism within a literary, historical, and cultural matrix, and to trace the development of its aesthetic from the intersection of such forces. It advances a theory of realism as contingent, provisional, mutating, and adapting to circumstance. |
