tragic realism

is the troubling juncture between the known surfaces of life and language and those depths that one can only sense.

Tragic realism' is Auerbach's way of naming the troubling juncture between the surfaces of life and language, which one can both know and feel, and the plunging vertical aspect of some other dimension altogether, which one can only sense. It is at such moments that mimesis is achieved the representation of the essential unity of a character with its fate in all their blinding reality and luminous 'evidence,' as revealed in a singular act of the self.' (Porter in Aurbach 2013: xxix)

tragic realism, n.Definitions

tragic realism