A type of novel that places a strong emphsis on the truthful representation of the actual in fiction.  Tenerally, the realist is a believer in pragmatism, and the truth he seeks to find and express is a relativistic truth, associated with discernible consequences and verifiable by experience.  Gennerall, too, the realist is a believer in democracy, and the materials he elects to to describe are the common, the average, the everyday.

A type of novel characterized as the fictional attempt to give the effect of realism by representing complex characters with mixed motives who are rooted in a social class, operate in a highly developed social structure, interatct with many other characters, and undergo plausible and everyday modes of experience.