The effect of reality (french: effet de réel) is a textual device identified by

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...

, the purpose of which was to establish literary texts as realistic.

History

Barthes first suggested this concept in his 1968 essay "The Reality Effect," in which he argues that untheorized descriptive "residues" of the text produce effects of reality through their dissembling of the tripartite sign. In the absence of any signified, Barthes argues, the textual signifiers for "real" objects had for their actual signifieds only the concept of realism itself; further, Barthes suggested that the origins of this textual device came through the development of an "aesthetic finality of language" present in the use of the rhetorical device of

ecphrasis The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal descrip ...

in "Alexandrian neo-rhetoric of the second century" (''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 Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...

and Ankersmit expressed is also to be found in the field of

Discursive psychology Discursive psychology (DP) is a form of discourse analysis that focuses on psychological themes in talk, text, and images. As a counter to mainstream psychology's treatment of discourse as a "mirror" for people's expressions of thoughts, intentio ...

; and

Jonathan Potter Jonathan Potter (born 8 June 1956) is Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and one of the originators of discursive psychology. Life Jonathan Potter was born in Ashford, Kent, and spent most of his childho ...

has analysed similar problems and issues in his "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 Historiography Literary criticism {{lit-criticism-stub