A realist exploration of everyman as a morality play

Realism is much more than an analytical tool for exploring a text within the context of a particular period, given that its major concern is with the accurate and truthful representation of reality as it is or as it happens. Reality is not location bound or time bound, neither does it emphasize experiences that can be captured chronologically. As a result of this therefore, the realists are encumbered with the objective representation of man’s daily experiences and struggles that cut across epoch or be viewed as timeless. Realism is a multifaceted movement that came into lime light in the 19^th and 20^th centuries as a response to the romantics literary works especially those that are text based to buttress this fact, Taghizadoh (2014: 1628) asserts that:

The realistic novel was in shop opposition to the romance. If the romancer felt free from the moral reality, and if he would therefore, compose a story that was quite subjective and had nothing to do with the real human society, the realist novelist would feel a heavy load on his shoulder to provide an objective rendition of the meaning of humanity… realistic novel has objectively concerned itself with the daily life experiences of the common man and woman….

Every loyal realist writer concerned himself with the reflection of life as it affected man generally, with no attempt to present issues in ways that will appeal to the readers’ fancy. It is on this premise therefore, that this paper considers realism an apt tool to examine Everyman (1508) in the light of the man that existed in the medieval era and man in the contemporary society. Being a coherent and a uniform movement, realism emerged in many parts of Europe and America from 1840s featuring figures in different parts of Europes that frontier the move. These figures according to Habib (2005:471) included ‘Flaubert and Balzac in France, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russia George Eliot and Charles Dickens in England, as well as William Dean Howells and Henry James in America.” As mentioned earlier, the emphasis of realism was to provide an accurate, truthful and objective representation of the real world. Other realists aesthetics that enable the real representation of human experiences as real as they occur are the creation of characters and incidents from all social strata, the use of descriptive and evocative details”, focus on topics and issues that vividly reflect contemporary life; use of simple and plain language which is mostly the vernacular language of the people within which the text in produced; projecting probability as it happens in real life; emphasize the whole in place of the individual, et ce tra. These strategies among others were deployed by the realists to achieve a ‘true-to-life” reflection of reality.

Despite the realists attempt to mirror reality as it is through the strategies outline above, they have also categorized realism in order to be able to focus on difference issues of life as man is confronted by them. There is therefore, the magical realism that infuses fantasy and reality, as projected in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Years of Solitude (1967). The socialist realism that focus on the life of the working class and the poor, as represented in Les Miserable (1862) by victor Hugo.

The Kitchen sink realism, which is an off-shoot of social realism that emphasizes the lives of young working class British men who spend their free time drinking in pubs. An example is Room at the Top by John Braine (1957).

The socialist realism that was propounded by Joseph Stalida which glorifies the struggles of the proletariats as projected by Fyodor Gladkor (1925) in Cement.

The naturalism is an extreme form of realism that was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, founded by Emile Zola on the belief that science can explain all social and environmental phenomenon as reflected in Willaim Faulkner’s A Rose for Family (1930).

The last strand of realism and my area of emphasis is the pscyological realism that is character driven and place more emphasis on what motivates characters to make certain decisions. It is also referred to as a psychological fiction, a narrative genre that focuses on interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters (Wikipedia). Adopting the psychological realism as a means of exploring Everyman (1508) as it relates to the medieval era and the contemporary society is dependent on the influence of psychology as a tool of understanding the human psyche. On the basis that man is constantly motivated either intrinsicly or extrinsicly inform the analysis of Everyman(1508) in relation to man generally or as it applies to the medieval or contemporary man.