RURAL TO URBAN TRANSITIONS IN EUROPEAN REALISTIC NOVELS
RURAL TO URBAN TRANSITIONS IN EUROPEAN REALISTIC NOVELS

Summary/Abstract: The greatest character in the works of Rebreanu, Reymont, Verga, Hardy and Blasco Ibáñez is the countryside, the rural environment artistically reconstructed beyond geographical clues. It is a setting that transcends the novels it inspired. It is the greatest character, with its moods and a destiny of its own, celebrated in novel after novel. In minute detail, this prose points to the ancient rituals of rural life, to the unifying rhythms of man and nature confronted against the background of various landscapes. Descriptions of wind shift, soil mix, the contour of hills and hedge rows serve as more than narrative colour. They detail the texture of rural life, the daily realities that shaped its speech and fired its folklore. Even as they wrote, the pastoral atmosphere was vanishing, and its ancient regime was threatened. The typical scenery and the people were becoming a breed of the past. In charting the social consequences of urbanization, these writers predicted the true victim: the land itself. Despite the inevitable thrust of modernization, that way of life with its archetypes remained in the collective memory due to their artistic efforts.

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