19th c victorian age

7/29/2019 19th C Victorian Age

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The Victorian Age(a Second Wave of Romanticism)

and Fin de siecle


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Historical Background

New material developments Advancement in commercegrowth

of markets, new mechanical devices

Great Exhibition1851, era ofprosperity

Evils of Industrial Revolnslums,exploitation of labour (esp. children)

Painful fight of the enlightened few for

social reform


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Historical Background

Intellectual developments

Impatience with new ideas on the one

hand; numerous intellectual activities

on the other Science & religionDarwin (Origin

of Species 1859) Socio-pol. theoryHerbert Spencer,

JS Mill (utilitarianismBentham, grtst

happiness of the grtst number, poetry is misreprnsn)


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Literary Features

Morality, proprietyrevolt against thegrossness of the earlier age, deferenceto convention (Tennyson and Dickens

best examples) Revolt against convention (Carlyle,

Arnold, Thackeray, Browning).Strengthened with age: Pre-Raphaelites(no morality except the authors regard

for his art)


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Literary Features

New ideas in science, religion,politics scepticism inIn

Memoriam, Arnolds meditative

poetry & Carlyle

New religious and ethical thought

Oxford Movement (Newman) marked widespread discontent withChurch of England


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Literary Features

Educationcompulsory, enormousreading public, cheap printing and

paperdemand for the novel

International influencesAmerican-

British writers interaction, German

influence (Carlyle, Arnold), Italian(Browning, Swinburne, Morris,

Meredith)


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Alfred Tennyson Early poemsTimbuctoo

The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters

Morte dArthur, Ulysses, Locksley Hall

The Princesstheme of the newwoman (ladies academy & a mutinouslyintellectual princess at the head)

In Memoriam (1850)long series ofmeditations on life & death

Maud


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Alfred TennysonIdylls of the Kingtales of King Arthurand the Round Table

Enoch Ardenseaman, supposedly

drowned, returns to find wife married,regretfully retires without making himselfknown

Drama in later years (e.g. Becket)Later poemssharper tone; discontent with

the artifices of his time


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Tennysons Style Subjectearlier, lyric and legendary

narrative; later ethical interest. No deepthinker; content to mirror the feelings /

aspirations of the time

CraftGreat care and skill. Mix of sound

and sense (great musical quality)

Keatsian descriptive power. Ornatedescription, pictorial effect, sumptuous

imagery (created a lovely image by carefully

amassing detail)


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Robert Browning

Pauline introspective poem,influence of Shelley

Paracelsus heros unquenchable

thirst for that breadth of knowledgewhich is beyond the grasp of one man

Brownings predominant ideas: lifewithout love a failure; Gods will, more

than human conjecture, is behind

everything


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Robert Browning Straffordplay

Sordelloobscurerelationship between artand life (hero a Mantuan troubadour)

Bells & Pomegranates poems & playsincludg Pippa Passes (play)

Group of dramatic poems where he perfectedthe dramatic monologue

Men & Women, Dramatis Personae

Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Caliban UponSetebos, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler


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Robert Browning The Ring & the Bookdiscursive story of the

murder of a young wife Pompilia by her worthless

husband, told by nine different people

Asolando last work

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would

triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.


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Brownings Style

Obscurity; sometimes rugged, angularstyle

At its best, noble dignity & verbal

music Variety of metrical forms

Cleverly manipulated rhythmic effects

Didnt care for beauty of description forits own sake; beauty of expression oftencaptured in a single image


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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Woman of acute sensibilities

Fervent supporter of noble causes (like Italian

independence)Prometheus Bound

The Seraphim & Other Poems

Sonnets from the PortugueseAurora Leigh


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Matthew Arnold

Son of the famous headmaster of Rugby School,

Thomas Arnold (poem Rugby Chapel)

Poems not numerous, not of high quality

Classical themes in meditative & even melancholy

cast (this is a modernist strain)

Alienation, stoicism, despair, spiritual emptiness

Apostle of sanity & culture


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Arnold: Poetry

Lyrics

Marguerite poems, The Forsaken Merman, Dover

Beach, Scholar Gipsy

Poetic dramas

Empedocles on Etna, Merope

Narrative poems

Tristram & Iseult, Sohrab & Rustum Elegies

Thyrsis, Scholar Gipsy


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Matthew Arnold: Prose

Prosecritical essaysare of greater value Essays in Criticism best prose (includes The

Function of Criticism at the Present Time)

Advocates a broad, cosmopolitan view ofEuropean literature as a basis for comparative

judgements

Attacks provincialism & lack of real knowledge Develops idea of criticism as a disinterested &

flexible mode of thought that has application

outside literature


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Matthew Arnold: Prose

Wrote freely on theological & political themesCulture & Anarchy (consideration of the dilemmas of

English society. Culture as pursuit of perfection,

getting to know . . . the best which has been thought

and said in the world)

Literature & Dogma

Wandering between two worlds,

One dead, the other powerless to be born.


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Other Poets

Edward Fitzgerald best-known for

translation of the Rubaiyats of Persian poet

Omar Khayyam

Arthur Hugh Clough poems charged with

the deep-seated despair & despondency of

Arnolds works

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Am.) wrote

too much over wide variety of topics, general

standard low

Whitman


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Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 1848painter poets like D. G. Rossetti, W. H.

Hunt & John Millais formed PRB

To return to the truthfulness, simplicity & spirit of

devotion of Italian painting before Raphael &

Italian Renaissance

Others Ch. Rossetti, William Morris, Swinburne

DG Rossettis poem The Blessed Damozel

Medievalism

Pictorial realism & Symbolic overtones

Union of flesh & spirit

Sensuousness & religiousness

Robert Buchanan: Fleshly School of Poetry


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Charles Dickens

early reading

interest in theatre

familys poor financial conditions

Sketches by Boz series about London life First novel The Pickwick Papers serialized (1836)

(illustrator: Seymour, then Hablot K. Browne Phiz)

Boz-Phiz tie up; explains Dickenss caricaturesEnormous popularity

Oliver Twist (1837, serialized in Bentleys Magazine)

Nicholas Nickleby (1838)


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Charles Dickens

Master Humphreys Clock

The Old Curiosity Shop

Barnaby Rudge (historical)

American Notes & Martin Chuzzlewit(unpopular in US)

Christmas Carol

Dombey & Son (Autobiography of a Steam Engine)

David Copperfield (after this, decline in his art)

Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two

Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, The

Mystery of Edwin Drood

Di k F f N l


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Dickens : Features of Novels Popularity

large number of novels, hasty & ill-considered work

staginess of plot, unreality of characters, loose style

yet rich & enduring tales

Social Reform

no systematic social or political theory

aroused public interest in contemporary evils

Boarding schoolsNicholas N; WorkhousesOliver T

New manufacturing systemHard Times Court of ChanceryBleak House

Spread of benevolence rather than politicl upheaval

Contrived poetic justice

Exa erated characters like the Grad rinds

I i ti


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Imagination

Multiplicity of characters & situations

Lower & middle classes esp. in & around London

Humour & pathosBroad, humane, creative humour

Not subtle humour; Sometimes boisterous

Satire sometimes develops into burlesque

Pathos often cheap & third-rate Depended on devices such as elaborate descriptions of the death

of children

Described the horrible as in the death of Bill Sykes

Painfully melodramatic as in Madame Defarge

Mannerisms

Flat characters representing one mood or one phrase

Uriah Heep (umble) Barkis willin


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William Makepeace Thackeray Born in Calcutta

Contributions to Punch & Frazers Magazine

Vanity Fair(satire, adventures of Becky Sharp)

The Yellowplush Correspondence

The Book of Snobs (Snobs Thackerays pet abhorrence) Fitzboodle Papers(biting observations of human weakness)

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon(picaresque novel)

Pendennis(partly autobiographical, satire, moralizing) Henry Esmond (historical), The Newcomes, The

Virginians (sequel to Henry Esmond)

Poetry


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William Makepeace Thackeray

Debt to Fielding

Early neglect; genius blossomed slowly, as Fielding

Reacting against popular novel of the day, esp. against

romanticizing of rogues

Adopted Fieldings methodTo view his characters steadily & fearlessly

To record their failures as well as merits

Characters rounded but no flattery (clever people are

rogues; virtuous are fools)

Humour & Pathos

Sneering cynicism; satire potent method of revealing truth

Quiet & effective pathos, seldom sentimental


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Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne (Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell)

Charlotte Bronte 1st novel: The Professor

Jane Eyre

Love story of the plain, vital heroine told with franknessWeak, improbable plot

Main characters conceived deeply

Shirley, Villette

Plots largely restricted to authors own experiences

High seriousness, no humour

The wonder & beauty of the romantic world


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Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights (1847)The very spirit of the wild, desolate moors

Chief characters conceived in gigantic proportions

Passions have an elemental, poetic force

Series of climaxes, sustained intensity of the novel carried to

unbelievable peaks of passionStark, unflinching realism

PoemsNo Coward Soul is Mine

Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee

Anne Bronte

Agnes Grey

The Tenant of Windfell Hall

B Th i I


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Brontes: Their Importance

The romantic movement in poetry felt in the

novel as against the detached observation of Jane

Austen

Brontes painted sufferings of the individual New conception of the heroine as a woman ofvital strength & passionate feelings

Emotion, imagination, intellect

Poetic language, lyrical tone

Concern with human soul (later followed by G. Eliot& Meredith)


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George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans

Serious moralist

duty is the supreme law of life

humble life is interesting and exalted

daily choices have moral significance

there is no escape from reward / punishment due to

ones action)

Association with Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill andother liberals

Life-partnership with George Henry Lewes (so

morally defensive??)


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George Eliot Early novels fresh

1st Adam BedeScenes of Clerical Life

Later turned to scientific and conscious art

Romola (historical)Felix Holt (social revolt)

Daniel Deronda (Hebrew race)

Later successesMill on the Floss

Silas Marner

Characters not individual, but typical; under the

same universal moral law

Th H d


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Thomas Hardy

Trained as architect

Problematic religiosity (agnostic and belief in absence ofGod?)

Novels set in partly real, partly dream county of Wessex

The epoch just before the railways and industrial revolution Pessimistic and bitterly ironic tone

Eye for poignant detail; real newspaper events used as detail

Himself called his finest novels, Novels of Character andEnvironment

Emphasis on impersonal & negative power of Fate over

working class people


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Desperate Remedies; Under the Greenwood

Tree (Wessex); A Pair of Blue Eyes

1st

success: Far From the Madding Crowd(Wessex; title from Grays Elegy; not tragic;

Bathsheba Everdene tries to manage farm

herself, marries wrong person, finally marries

Gabriel Oak)

The Return of the Native (Clym Yeobright

returns from Paris to Egdon Heath; marries

Eustacia Vye; tragedies)

modernist elements: nature/society battle (Eustacia

wants to leave the Heath, defy Fate, and drowns),

social commentary, failure and ambition themes


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The Mayor of Casterbridge (tragedy; Wessex;The Life and Death of a Man of Character;

drunkard Michael Henchard auctions off hiswife and daughter; 18 yrs later he is Mayor;reunited with wife and daughter who falls inlove with Donald Farfrae; decline in fortunes)

The Woodlanders

Tess of the dUrbervilles (controversial for itchallenged the sexual mores of the day)

Jude the Obscure (Jude a lower-class youngman dreams of becoming a scholar. Themes --class, scholarship, religion, marriage, and themodernization of thought and society)


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Tess of the dUrbervilles

The title character is a beautiful country girl, Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield, the daughter of uneducated (and rather shiftless) peasants.During a chance encounter with an amateur genealogist (the local parson), Tess's father, John Durbeyfield, learns that he isdescended from a medieval noble family, the d'Urbervilles. The elder Durbeyfields, looking for a way to wring an advantage fromtheir illustrious ancestry, decide to send a very reluctant Tess to "claim kin" with the local nouveau-riche d'Urberville family (whoin fact have no connection to the original d'Urbervilles, having appended the ancient name to their real surname of "Stoke" tocreate the illusion of "old" connections).

Tess begins working at the d'Urberville house, and attracts the unwanted attentions of the playboy son of the household, Alecd'Urberville. In a rape or seduction (the scene is open to interpretation), Tess becomes pregnant. She returns home shortlyafterward, against Alec's wishes, and bears a child whom she names "Sorrow." The baby, however, soon dies, freeing Tess to makea new start. In hopes of leaving her disgrace behind, she takes a job at a dairy forty miles away.

While employed as a milkmaid, Tess meets Angel Clare, the virtuous younger son of a minister. Although the two are fromdifferent social classes, they fall in love, and Angel repeatedly urges Tess to marry him. Tess knows he perceives her as aninnocent country maiden but, afraid of losing his love and admiration, finds it extraordinarily difficult to tell him her secret. Atlength, she agrees to the marriage.

On the wedding night, after Angel asks forgiveness for a past sexual indiscretion of his own, she finally finds the courage to makeher confession, thinking her "offense" to be exactly the same as his. To her horror, Angel is so deeply mortified that his attitude

toward her changes completely. When she protests "I thought you loved me, my very self!" he declares "The woman I have beenloving is not you" but "another woman in your shape." At this stage, certain he has been deceived by an artful hussy, Angel iscompletely unable to reconcile his love for Tess with his changed perception of her. The two separate a few days later; Angel tellsTess he will come to her if he decides he can endure living with her.

Tess briefly returns to her family, but, finding this unbearable, she goes to work again as a day laborer on other farms. During thesemonths, Alec d'Urberville re-enters her life, claiming to be a reformed sinner and begging her to marry him. Tess rebuffs him withloathing and continues her difficult, lonely existence, performing backbreaking field work all winter and waiting for Angel torelent.

In the spring, John Durbeyfield dies. The family then loses the lease on their cottage and is made homeless, forced to travel thecountryside with all their possessions searching for lodgings and employment. At this point, Alec d'Urberville re-appears and adesperate Tess finally agrees to become his mistress so that she can support her family.

Angel Clare, meanwhile, has been in Brazil, where a disease nearly kills him. After much thought, he returns to England to findTess and renew their love. He discovers her living in a seaside hotel with Alec d'Urberville, beautifully dressed but miserable.Tess, in despair, sends Angel away, and goes back to her room, weeping. When Alec scoffs at her misery and insults her husband,she stabs him to death, then forms the wild hope that the murder will somehow purify her in Angel's eyes. She goes after him andthey flee together, finally consummating their marriage while hiding in a guest house. Spied by the cleaning woman, they areforced to move on, eventually reaching Stonehenge. Here, Tess asks Angel to take care of her younger sister, 'Liza-'Lu, who is "aspiritualized image of Tess." Soon after, the police arrive to make their arrest. In the last scene, as Angel and 'Liza-'Lu watchoutside the walls of a prison, a black flag ascends a flagpole, signalling the completion of Tess's execution.

In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, through the central themes of sex, class perceptions, material longing and family betrayal, Hardymanages to suggest the ambiguities of time and change and divine power versus human reason.


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Wessex Poems

Poems about Emma (guilt at his neglect of his

wife)

War poems (second Boer War 1899-1902, and

First World War); diversity of attitude; no clear-

cut opinion of war; related specific historicalconflicts to a wider historical scheme, esp. in

The Dynasts (epic closet drama of the

Napoleonic Wars)The Going of the Battery; Drummer Hodge; The

Man He Killed


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Hardy: Modernism

Class-inflected, skeptical, self-implicating tendencies Highly ambiguous language

Resistance to conventional attitudes

Insistence on the possibility of achieving a defiant

freedom to choose and refuse

Doubt, pessimism, intellectual crisis

Denial of resolution, closure

Unusual distortion and simplification characteristic of

expressionism

Tendency to mix sharply contrsting artistic modes in a

single work


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Prose Writers


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Macaulay

Writing for recreation

Balladic poems

French and English history

History of England No accuracy of fact

Immensely pleasurable style

Essays on Bunyan, Addison, Bacon, Johnson,

Goldsmith, Byron

One-sided criticism

Brilliant style and wealth of allusion

Carlyle


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Carlyle Scottish; German influence

Connections in the US; friendship with Emerson

Time of industrial revolution; but transcendental, not

materialistic view of the world

Heroes and Hero Worship

Leaders in religion, poetry, war and politicsDivinity (Odin),Prophet (Mahomet), Poet (Dante, Shakespeare), Priest (Luther,

Knox), Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns), King

(Cromwell, Napoleon)

development of human intellect History as the biography of a few heroes; heroism as a matter of

power, not of physical or moral courage

The French Revolution

Not historical in the modern sense; pictorial and dramatic

S R


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Sartor Resartustailor repatched

commentary on the thought and life of a Germanphilosopher Teufelsdrckh, author of Clothes: theirOrigin and Influence.

Simultaneously factual and fictional, serious and

satirical, speculative and historical. Ironicallymetafictional.

Where can one find truth? The imaginary"Philosophy of Clothes" -- meaning is to be

derived from phenomena, continually shiftingover history, as cultures reconstruct themselvesin changing fashions, power-structures, and

faith-systems.


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Ruskin

Social reformer; but not very successful at that

Sensitiveness and sincerity

Art criticismsSeven Lamps of Architecture

Modern Painters (Ruskins admiration of Turner)Stones of Venice

Political economy

Unto This Last (political economy is merely commercial;detailed plan to make a nation wealthy by increasing thehealth and happiness of human beings)

Sesame and Lilies (on books & womanly character)

19th c victorian age

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