OUTLINE

1. History

2. Main Characteristics

3. Types of Literature
3.1 - Drama 3.2 - Novel 3.3 - Poetry 3.4 Nonfictional Prose

Overview
Queen Victoria s reign (1837-1901), the most powerful time Industry Revolution: tremendous scientific progress and ideas Britain: the most powerful nation, taken over of the Earths surface

Industrialism Progress or Decline?

Changes in making goods that substituting machines for hand labor Workers were hired and migrated to industrial towns Low wages, long hours Women & children were preferred to be hired The Corn Law kept corn prices at high level Intended to protect farmers from cheap foreign imports of grains Only nobility and farm owners benefited >< Urban working class & manufacturers suffered

Children
Only rich children could go to school, mostly boys Poor ones had to work up to 16 hours/day, 6 days a week Be purchased to work in mines & factories Most died early: poor working & living condition Seen as replaceable parts of machines Given no care

The Woman Questions

Rich women
Taught how to draw, paint, sing, dance Be purity, not show any skin, no cosmetics or jewelry After getting married, stayed at home, looked after the chores, be dutiful

Poor women
Worked at mills & factories, garment industries Some worked up to 12 hours/day, 7 days a week No choice but to accept whatever placed in front of them

Closer view to daily life: reflect practical & social problems & interests Moral purpose: derive from art for the arts sake Idealism: an age of doubt & pessimism Practical & materialistic age

3.1 - Drama
1830-1870: innumerable plays of every kind Plays = melodramas (music-dramas or plays with music) Early 19th century: violence, sadism, attempted seduction, low humor, murder, sensationalism, conventional moralising 3 elements: realism, fantasy & wit

W.S. Gilbert (18361911)

Oscar Wilde (18541900)

Oscar Wilde (18541900)

The importance of being earnest

3.1 - Drama

1830-1870: innumerable plays of every kind Plays = melodramas (music-dramas or plays with music) Early 19th century: violence, sadism, attempted seduction, low humor, murder, sensationalism, conventional moralising 3 elements: realism, fantasy & wit Excellent introduction to the social background of the theatre (Theatre: working community of actors, managers, technicians) Length of runs Longer duration of plays

Our Boys (1875) 500 performances

Charleys aunt (1892) 1362 performances

Dorothy 931 performances

George Bernard Shaw: - an Irishman, born in a middle-class family - made a revolution in the English theatre Drama for Shaw: - a tool to help people in terms of solving moral issues - issues: marriage, equal right for men and women, prostitution and its reasons, relationships and many others

3.2. Novel

The most popular & dominant form of literature Novelists: Moral and social responsibility Realism and Criticism Making the readers realize social unjustices

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3.2. Novel
WOMEN WRITERS
A great number of novels were written by women Not easy to publish their works Use male pseudonyms in order to see their novels in print

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Mary Ann Evans, under the name of George Eliot. Of the novelists of the period, she was the most
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3.2 - Novel
MAIN FEATURES Obtrusive and omniscient narrators Didactic aim Linearity Long complicated plots and sub-plots Precise creation of characters and deep analysis of characters inner lives (psychology) The setting of the city Most popular genre = Bildulgsroman (novel of formation)
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Bildulgsroman
Coin in literary criticism Focus on moral and psychological growth of main characters Often feature a main conflict between the main character and society

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MAIN FEATURES Obtrusive and omniscient narrators Didactic aim Linearity Long complicated plots and sub-plots Precise creation of characters and deep analysis of characters inner lives (psychology) The setting of the city Most popular genre = Bildulgsroman (novel of formation) Main themes: money, wealth, realistic portrait of society denouncing its injustices and iniquities Company Logo

3.2. Novel
Early-Victorian

Novel Mid-Victorian Novel Late- Victorian Novel

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Early-Victorian Novel (social-problem novel)

Dealing with social and humanitarian themes Realism and criticism of social evils Faith in progress, general optimism The main representative: Charles Dickens

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Early-Victorian Novel (social-problem novel)

Social problems: Poverty, crime. A child of the parish had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food. (Twist p.5) Dickens' Criticism of the 1834 Poor Law. Self-sacrifice, benevolence and charity.

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Mid-Victorian Novel (novel of purpose)

Romantic and Gothic elements Psychological interest The main representative: Bronte Sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne)

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Mid-Victorian Novel (novel of purpose)

Began with Horace Walpoles The Castle of Otrato (1765) Create feelings of gloom, mystery, suspend dramatic and sensational Cross the boundary Daylight and the dark Life and death Consciousness and unconsciousness Found in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre and Emily Brontes Company Logo Wuthering Heights

Gothic

Mid-Victorian Novel (novel of purpose)

Love crossing the boundary between life and death. Spirit of romanticism in the figures of Hereton Earnshaw, of Catherine Linton, and of Healthcliff-tearing open Catherines grave, removing one side of her coffin,. The love of nature is not presented in just in its tranquil and smiling aspects but also appears in its wild, stormy moods.

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Late-Victorian novel
(nature novel near to European Naturalism)

European Naturalism Taking place from 1880s-1940s Outgrowth of literary realism Characteristics: Pessimism Detachment from the story

Scientific look at human life, objectivity of observation, dissatisfaction with Victorian values

The main representative: Thomas Hardy

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Late-Victorian novel
(nature novel near to European Naturalism)

An early piece of feminist literature

The fates favor the lead character Resilience, Bathshebas intelligence serious errors and good of judgments luck to overcome her folly

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3.3 - Poetry
General features

Continuation of Romantic Poetry & a bridge between this earlier era & the modernist poetry Experience with new styles & new ways of expression Reflection of the period's crying social contradictions
Faith >< Doubt Love >< Rejection Countryside >< City Freedom >< Self-sacrifice

Early in the period: high moral seriousness was inseparable from traditional ideals of poetic beauty
Subjective experience, individuals feelings & sensations Hidden emotions or earning desires

Genres
Lyric poetry Dramatic verse Narrative poetry Long poetry

Alfred Lord Tennyson

(1809 -1892)

Poet of the people The doubt & the faith, the grief & the joy of English people in an age of fast social changes In Memoriam (1850) Idylls of the King (1859-1885)

In Memoriam
(1850)

Tennyson's masterpiece Queen Victorias favorite poem : "Next to the Bible, In Memoriam is my comfort. In memory of Arthur Henry Hallam Philosophical & Religious thoughts:
doubts about the meaning of life existence of soul & afterlife faith in the power of love & the souls instinct & immortality

Arthur Henry Hallam

(1811-1833)

In Memoriam
(1850) The loss of a loved one

In Canto 27 :
He is not here; but far away

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasped no more

The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

And like a guilty thing I creep, At earliest morning to the door.

3.4 - Non-fictional Prose

General features

A wide range of subjects: politics, religion, history, personal biography, but chiefly concerned with social problems Writers (Sagers) as latter-day prophets & interpreters offering inspired wisdom & advice An instrument of persuasion (beliefs & point of views)

Thomas Carlyle
(1795 - 1881 )

Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians struggling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order Inventing new words & changing the natural word order Sartore Resartus (1834) The French Revolution (1837) On heroes and Hero Worship (1841)

On heroes and Hero Worship

(1841)

Carlyles best known book Favorite view of history:

History of the world is at the bottom the history of great men
Decisive factor is the individual leadership of genius

The world was filled with contradictions the hero had to deal.
All heroes will be flawed. Their heroism lay in their creative energy in the face of these difficulties, not in their moral perfection

People ranging from the field of religion through to literature and politics

On heroes and Hero Worship

(1841)

Content

Lecture 1. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology

Lecture 2. The Hero as Prophet. Muhammad: Islam Lecture 3. The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakespeare Lecture 4: The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism Lecture 5. The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns Lecture 6. The Hero as King. Cromwell. Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism

On heroes and Hero Worship

(1841)

The Hero as Man of Letters (Quotes)

"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books." "In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream." "A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things." "What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." "The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire." "Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity." "Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom."