1. the philosophical doctrine that objects have an existence independent of the observer. Compare idealism. See also naive realism.

2. the older philosophical doctrine that universals, such as general terms and abstract ideas, have a greater genuine reality than the physical particulars to which they refer, as in so-called Platonic idealism. Compare nominalism.

3. in literature and the visual and performing arts, any mode of representation that seeks to present human experience and society in a way that is true to life. The quest for verisimilitude usually involves both a sensitive, complex delineation of the psychology of characters and a detailed description of social contexts. The term realism is particularly applied to a broad movement of this kind in 19th-century fiction, as represented by the work of French novelists Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) and Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880); Russian novelists Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), and Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910); and American novelist William Dean Howells (1837–1920). Literary naturalism is usually considered an offshoot of literary realism. —realist adj., n.