The critique of realism dominant in the 1970s and 1980s should be understood in the context of the longer history of anti-realism that accompanied the rise of literary modernism. Misconceptions about realism deriving from three sources within the larger frame of discourse of French theory: the modernist rejection of realism as an outmoded form; general claims about language, representation, and knowledge, making it harder to see the validity of the realist project; explicit attacks on realism, which need to be read as an argument with Lukács and the version of Marxism he represented. It is my hypothesis that the conception of realism as an epistemological problem is rooted these three tendencies, and once those positions are no longer assumed, then it can be shown that realism entails no special epistemological pleading and does not offer or require any particular philosophy of knowledge. Questions regarding realism’s truth should (and, if fact usually do) turn on what is represented, rather than on the claim that it has been represented truthfully. Realism should be understood as a set of conventions that emerge in nineteenth- century fiction and which have been recognized by critics since at least the second half of the twentieth century.