Victorian period in English literature

Victorian period in general

- In the 19^th century, Britain was at its most powerful and self-confident. The growing industry and foreign trade secured it a leading position among the world powers; its powerful navy and its colonial Empire was at its height protected its great industrial empire. As a result, the upper and middle classes enjoyed a long period of prosperity, which to contemporaries seemed likely to last forever.

- Failures to correct working class grievances led, however, to radicalism and to numerous political and social reforms.

- Many strategic colonies were won during the Napoleonic Wars, but the core of the new Empire was formed by India, Canada and later, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Philosophy

- optimistic, believed in man’s basic goodness and rationality

Utilitarianism (most influential philosophical stream)

- denied the importance of the beautiful or the ethical, it was only concerned with profits, the test of utility lies in how far it tends to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people“. (J. Bentham)

Liberalism (ruling political theory)

- was critical of all kinds of institutions that tend to restrict individual liberty; this expressed itself in demands for freedom of expression, equality of opportunity and universal education.

Religion

- early and mid-Victorian England was considered one of the most religious countries in the world: the attendance at church was regular.

- at the 2^nd half of the century, the influence of religion was declining because of the development of liberal and rationalist thought.

Science

Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species - evolution, the survival of the fittest

Discoveries and inventions: e.g. electricity, electric telegraph, steam turbine, use of chloroform and antiseptics in medicine, etc.

PROSE

- Novels of English critical realists represent the prose.

- The main theme of critical realism was the misery of people suffering under the ruthless industrial system and the many other social evils of the time. The remedy the writers offered was usually social reform, moral regeneration of the ruling class and education of the working class. That’s why so much idealization can be found in the Victorian novel.

(+ Ch. Dickens and W. M. Thackeray)

Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888)

- praised Greece and Rome and wished to see something of the old „classical harmony“ in English art and life; England could learn more from the Greeks or the French than from the Germans or from her own past

Essays in Criticism

- he sees a moral purpose in poetry, which is „a criticism of life“, he attacks the lack of concern with culture

- also a very important poet

Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Dodgson)

- explored the world of fantasy for the benefit of children

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - have a mad flavour with a curious undercurrent of logic

Brontë sisters - lived in the isolation of a Yorkshire vicarage

- Their childhood was not happy, the creation of their stories in later years might be regarded because of their fantasy, which was stronger, the lonelier they felt.

Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre - story of the governess who falls in love with her master, himself married to a madwoman

- a genuine love-story of great realism, full of sharp observations and with wit; her masterpiece

Emily Brontë

- her poems are vital and original, she had a more remarkable talent than her sister

Wuthering Heights - a novel

- romantic plot, but is realistic in scenery and characters. The central figure of this highly imaginative story is Heathcliff, a gipsy waif, picked up by Mr. Earnshaw and taken home and reared by him as one of his own children.

Anne Brontë her talent is smaller than the talent of her sisters (e.g. Agnes Grey)

George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans)

- she was interested in German philosophy, some of which she translated

- she shows sympathy in her novels for the faith of others and she is always concerned with moral problems; she deals mostly with country people (e.g. in The Mill on the Floss), she has a gift for reproducing their speech and a taste for their humour

- she is important because she is prepared to analyse human conduct. to show the moral consequences of even trivial actions

George Meredith

The Egoist and Diana of the Crossways are his main novels

- he was aware of conflict in man and woman, the conflict between what society demands and the fundamental brute desire for assertion

- his view of women is a world away from the conventional Victorian view: women must assert their own individuality against brutal men, must become more intelligent and willing to understand the forces of human life

Samuel Butler

Erewhon (meaning „nowhere“, in Czech translation Edkin = nikde)

- takes place in remote, unknown country; the teller is a snobbish man Higgs

- characters that are obviously pictures of England, highly satirical, full of attacks on English institutions and English stupidity. The „Books of the Machines“ warns that machines may well develop to a point where they can destroy human beings and take over their function (this idea appeared also in Čapek´s „RUR“).

Erewhon Revisited - Higgs returns to the Erewhon (at the end of the first part he left in a balloon), he finds out that he is praised as a God there because of his flight, he tried to explain to the people, that he is no God, but in vain = criticism of the Church and it’s dogmas

The Way of All Flesh

- Butler describes the life of four generations of the family of Pontifexes.

- attack not only on the Church but also on the family, the institution of marriage, and the false gods of Victorian education.

POETRY

Alfred Tennyson (later was made Lord Tennyson)

- his music is distinctive, but its flow is by no means „artless“ - nothing is left to chance, he experimented in metre with good results

The Palace of Art

- teaches that beauty must be shared

The Two Voices

- the conflict of a mind that’s orthodox Christianity is troubled by the new materialism; but orthodox belief wins, and Tennyson sees in the Victorian family a symbol of stability and hope

In Memoriam

- inspired by grief at the death of a friend, sets out in greater detail the Victorian dilemma; the poet becomes morbidly aware of how the new science has made man shrink to insignificance in the universe, but Christianity wins again, Tennyson knows that religion has the answer to life’s riddles

- again, the final symbol of security is the marriage of two people pure in heart

Robert Browning

- he is, to some extent, anti-romantic: there are railway-trains, cigars, grand pianos, language is often colloquial and even slangy. There is also humour (rarely found in the Romantics)

- he suggests the modern poets in his obscurity, but Browning’s obscurity comes from an impatience with language and a deliberate desire to dazzle the reader - Browning’s vocabulary is large and his fondness for little-known word proverbial.

Sordello

- so difficult that, in one of the lines, Browning himself said: „When I wrote that only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant; now God only knows.“

- his stage-plays were not successful, and he found his best dramatic outlet in the form he cultivated most -- the dramatic monologue:

Men and Women

- he put into the mouths of various historical characters certain philosophical themes, which, together, make up Browning’s answer to the Victorian dilemma. The answer is always „Act!“ He believes that our mere attempts to order our lives find their reward in heaven; whatever we start and leave uncompleted, God himself will complete.

The Statue and the Bust

- tells of two lovers who, unable to be together because of difficulties, die apart; now a statue and a bust, perpetually gazing at each other, mock their timidity

Elizabeth Browning was, in her day, thought to be superior as a poet to her husband. Her Aurora Leigh, a blank-verse novel, was hailed as the greatest thing since Shakespeare, but, though it is readable, we cannot now find many marks of greatness in it.

Arthur Hugh Clough

- at times, he seems very much part of his age and suddenly he leaps into the present with a modern technique and a modern attitude to life. His Armours de Voyage sounds, in places, as though it were written yesterday

Algernon Charles Swinburne

- influenced by contemporary French poets, particularly Baudelaire

- he takes as his theme some aspect of the old Romantic spirit of revolt (Down with morality and religion!) but his main aim seems merely to shock

Atalanta in Calydon

- a mythical and poetical drama, poetry reaches high quality

Poems and Ballads

- with their sensuality and noise, they had an almost Byronic impact on the public. (Nowadays it is hard to see what the fuss was about, beneath the jewelled words is a great emptiness)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

- a Jesuit pries, he burned his early poems (after ordination), but began writing again. His poems were published in 1918, and he became almost immediately a powerful influence

- He is a deeply religious poet, perpetually aware of God’s power and beauty as manifested in nature, but also convinced of his own unworthiness. His technique is so revolutionary that it makes Tennyson and Browning look stale and out-moded.

- He uses language in a highly individual way, but he is always logical, choosing a dialect-word where a Standard English one cannot give his meaning, playing tricks with grammar for the sake of a more forceful emphasis.

The Wreck of the Deutschland

- an elegy

- „sprung rhythm“ became a principle in English verse. Traditional English verse acknowledged two factors: a fixed number of stresses, a more or less fixed number of syllables to the line. Thus blank verse had to have, traditionally, five stresses and ten, or eleven, syllables. Sprung rhythm reverted almost to the principles of Old English verse: a fixed pattern of stresses, but any number of syllables, the idea being that English stresses are so strong that they can hold the line together, without any need for a syllabic pattern as well.