Studies in the Novel

Cynthia A. Callahan
Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels (review)
Studies in the Novel - Volume 40, Numbers 3, Fall 2008, pp. 377-379

University of North Texas

Project MUSE - Studies in the Novel - Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels (review) Project MUSE Journals Studies in the Novel Volume 40, Numbers 3, Fall 2008 Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels (review) Studies in the Novel Volume 40, Numbers 3, Fall 2008 E-ISSN: 1934-1512 Print ISSN: 0039-3827 DOI: 10.1353/sdn.0.0015 Reviewed by Cynthia A. CallahanThe Ohio State University at Mansfield Simmons, Ryan. Chesnutt and Realism: A Study of the Novels. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press. 208 pp. $39.95. In the last decade, several novels by Charles W. Chesnutt have been released posthumously, resulting in a wealth of scholarship that analyzes them in the context of Chesnutt's previously known body of work and attempts to locate his place in American literary history. In Chesnutt and Realism, Ryan Simmons advances both of these scholarly projects, reading Chesnutt's most recently published novels alongside his better-known work to argue that Chesnutt was not a marginal figure in American realism but rather a significant practitioner of realist methods. Scholars of realism will engage with-and perhaps be challenged by-Simmons's inclusion of race in defining the genre's parameters while Chesnutt scholars will appreciate this study's insights into Chesnutt's politics as well as his narrative techniques. In the introduction, Simmons...