Effect of Reality

Effect of Reality

The "effect of reality" is a textual device identified by Roland Barthes the purpose of which was to establish literary texts as realistic. Barthes suggested that this textual device established the realism of the text through the use of the rhetorical device of ecphrasis ("The Reality Effect" in Barthes 1989).

Barthes also showed that this "effect of reality" was a key problem of historical analysis and writing in that historical writing proclaimed an unproblematic realism that was in fact just this textual device in action ("The Discourse of History" in Barthes 1989). It was this aspect of the "effect of reality" that Ankersmit showed helped to explain both the evolution of historical enquiry and the problematic textual nature of history (Ankersmit 1989).

The concern with realism and the constructed nature of historical and literary facts that both Barthes and Ankersmit expressed is also to be found in the field of Discursive psychology; and Jonathan Potter has analysed similar problems and issues in his [http://www.sagepub.co.uk/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book203217 Representing Reality] (Potter 1996).

References

*Ankersmit FR, "The Reality Effect in the Writing of History: The Dynamics of Historiographical Topology", *Amsterdam, Noord-Hollandsche, 1989.

*Barthes R, "The Rustle of Language", trans' R. Howard, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989

*Potter, J, "Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London, Sage, 1996


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