Realism and Consensus in the English Novel by George Levine
Published 1981 · 105,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Realism and Consensus in the English Novel to read?
Realism and Consensus in the English Novel scores 70 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 70 out of 100
- Dense critical vocabulary: 'mythos', 'mimesis', 'epistemological', 'ontological' used with precision.
- Sentence structure: 64 out of 100
- Abstraction: 80 out of 100
- Philosophical argument about representation, knowledge, and the limits of language.
- Information density: 80 out of 100
- Every paragraph advances both close reading and broad theoretical argument simultaneously.
- Narrative indirection: 16 out of 100
- Scholarly argument; not narrative, but some indirection in how evidence accumulates.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Frankenstein as founding symbol of Victorian realism's anxieties.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Scholarly detachment with occasional ironic framing of Victorian self-deception.
- Resolution withholding: 14 out of 100
- Levine leaves open the deeper questions about representation and truth.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Thematic and author-by-author chapters that build a cumulative argument across a century of fiction.
How Realism and Consensus in the English Novel is regarded
Realism and Consensus in the English Novel holds a literary regard score of 79 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.