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INTRODUCTION

This paper deals with four chapters, namely chapter 9 the Rise of the Novel;
chapter 10 the Birth of Romanticism; chapter 11 Romantics and Anti-Romantics; and
chapter 12 the Early Victorian Novelists.
The first part tells about the appearance of literature work called novel which
was started in the first half of the eighteenth century. An example of the first work is
introduced in this section which is followed by the evidence showed of the work of
English novelist. This work is also compared to the other ones which are in short said
to be the founder-fathers of the rise of novel.
The discussion then moves to the birth of romanticism. It covers the time of
Romantic movement and its background as well as the person involved in it. Then,
the focus shifts to the features and qualities of the person along with some specific
works with their own characteristics.
Next chapter talks about romantics and anti-romantics in which several points
are put forward, like, the starting point of some works by different poets or novelist
with their detailed descriptions. Each point of the given work is presented along with
its own reasonable evaluation in accordance with time, feature, etc.
The last section is about the early Victorian novelists. It elaborates about the
nature, the moral and religious roots of Victorian works. Some great novelists with
their works are described as well as their own characteristics.

CHAPTER 9
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
In the first half of the eighteenth century there began to appear works to prose
to which we today give the name of novels. The novel from has its roots in the short
tales the Elizabethans enjoyed, in French romance, In the exotic prose fictions of
AphraBehn and others. But few today except literary scholars read those works for
pleasure, while Moll Flenders and Tom Jones are read, and obtain still wider currency
though adaptations. It is clear that social and intellectual current in the age had
combined to create something new and different. When people began to demand to
hear stories about people not too unlike themselves, in a society recognizably akin to
their own. Then the novel proper was born.
The rise of the novel is usually associated with the rise of the middle classes,
but a bald statement of the relationship missed the point. The middle classes had been
rising in importance since Chaucers time. What is important are the circumstances
and conditions of middle-class life. Women were the crucial factor in providing a
readership for fiction: it no longer accorded with eighteenth century good sense to
mate with an illiterate dim-wit. Better education for women coincided with a period
of greater leisure for women in the middle and upper ranks. It no longer seemed lady
like for women to involve herself directly in the domestic duties of her household: the
middle-class women, gradually became only a supervisor, the upper-class women
became a lady of leisure.
The proliferation of newspapers in the eighteenth century is evidence of this,
and so is the popularity of periodicals such as the Spectator and the Tader. The
creation by Addison and Steele in this last-named of the series of memorable
characters such as Sir RogerdeCoverley showed the way the wind was blowing. In a
series of essays that sometimes verge on the short story. Sir roger and others have
their individually and their peculiarities paraded.

Nor must we forget that the novelists saw it as their duty not only to inform,
but to inculcate morality. Usefulness was an important concept for the middle-classes,
and that included moral usefulness. Many extreme puritans, it is true, condemned all
fiction, on the ground that it was not true, it was lying. Thus as the novelists were
introducing their readers to new social worlds and delineating the behavior therein,
they were also providing the moral framework within which that behavior should be
judged. This triple aim-to reveal, to educate, to stimulate moral judgments-runs right
through the eighteenth and nineteenth century novel.
The great (if unconscious) pioneer of the English novel was Daniel Detoe (?
1660-1731)-a businessman, politician, journalist, spy, hack-writer and (at the end of
his life) the author of five or six narratives that laid the foundations for the novel
proper. Of these Robinson Crusoe is the best known-often via adaptations and
simplified versions for children. Crusoe gains a companion, but (more important) he
gains a slave. The book is a perfect picture of man as an economic being. Crusoe is
practical, capable: he learns by his errors and is firm in command. As an emotional
being he hardly exists at all. He may profess to be moved by the devotion of his slave
Xun, but a few pages on he is selling him for sixty pieces of eight. It is probably this
obsessive practicality, this devotion to economic self-help, this distrust of the
romantic that has frequently repelled readers, particularly in the nineteenth century.
Moll Flanders illustrates this perhaps even better than Robinson Crusoe. Once
again Defoe goes to great lengths to convince his readers that what he is telling is not
fiction, but a true story the confessions of a notorious seventeenth-century thief. But a
life of crime is (as with Crusoes island years) only part of the story. We learn the fact
that Moll goes to bed with a lot of men, but we learn very little more. True we might
draw up a scale, put the husbands in order, from the least loved to the toast. But Moll
loves her favorite, Lancashire husband infinitely less than she loves herself, and the
dominant interest in the book is her own material well-being.

The importance of Defoes achievement was not immediately appreciated,


Defoe himself was despised by the arbiters of taste as a hack, a sensationalist and
something less than a gentleman. The novel, it should be remembered, never
completely gained respectability as a literary form until our own century. It was left to
a member of Defoes own class, Samuel Richardson (1659-1761) another small
tradesman, to advance on his brilliant beginnings.
Clarissa Harlow is a much greater book, and perhaps it is mainly its length
(2000-odd pages) that prevents it being a living classic. But doubts intrude here too.
Clarissa is mistreated by her worldly family who want her to marry an uninspiring
suitor. She is loved by the rake Lovelace, who abducts her, lodges her in a brothel,
and eventually rapes her while she is drugged. Clarissa refuses to marry him, and
wastes away, while Lovelace is killed in a duel. The subject is simple yet terrible, but
the loving, lingering detail with which it is treated suggests that it appealed to
Richardson in ways he can scarcely have acknowledged to himself. There is pity in
the treatment, and horror, but is there not also more than a suspicion of a gloat, of lips
being licked.
The endless detail of Richardson, inherited from Defoe was one of the things
that Henry Fielding (1707-1754) seized on when he came to write Shamela. The first
of his attacks on Richardsons successful novel. Fielding took the suspicion of Pamela
motives that many readers felt to its logical conclusion; shamela is vulgar whore who
pretends virtue to entrap her master. Fielding was as unlike Richardson in character as
the Idle Apprentice in Hogarths contemporary series of etching was unlike the
Industrious Apprentice. Fieldings first novel proper joseph Andrews begins (and it is
some extent lamed by this beginning) as another satire on Pamela. Many of these are
described in mock heroic terms for Fielding was very concerned to establish his kind
of novel in a respectable classical tradition. What Fielding was aiming at as Joseph
Andrews developed was a panoramic picture of eighteenth century England, set in the
context of a conservative but tolerant and compassionate social morality. This is what
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he was actually to achieve in his next and great novel, Tom Jones. The title hints at
his intention: one of the commonest British surnames, allied with a sturdy British
Christian name in its familiar form. Not that Tom is quite a British Everyman. He is
too handsome, gallant and generous for that. But he allied what Fielding sees as many
of the best qualities of his countryman along with more negative traits: his
impetuousness, for example, continuously leads him into scrapes, both to love and
war. When Tom sets out on the road the social focus is widened. On the road can be
found a cross-section of English life with the accent perhaps on the adventurous and
the unfortunate.
After the brilliant energy and originality of these three great founder-fathers
came a new generation of novelists less original (with one exception), and more
competent journeymen than trail-blazers Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), for example
takes the basic picaresque form as Fielding established it and produced two
rumbustious novels in which we follow the rowdy scamps who are his heroes through
a variety of adventures on land and at sea. the epistolary novel was developed also by
France Burney (1752-1840) almost always known as Fanny. Her most famous novel.
The joker in the pack, the innovator and original was Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
whose Life and Opinions of TristramShandy, Gent is as unlike any other gentlemans
life (or opinions) at it is possible to imagine.
We get a sense in many of these late eighteenth century writers of marking
time. The world was changing: physically the industrial revolution was leaving its
mark already on the landscape of England and the day-to-day lives of its inhabitants.
Eventually the novel was going to have going to have to absorb these sweeping
changes.

CHAPTER 10
THE BIRTH OF ROMANTICISM
In the later years of the eighteenth century; there began a shift in the way
educated men and women regarded themselves and the world around them. That
shift, in the aftermath of which we still live, was later given name of the Romantic
Movement.
Of course the main elements of Romanticism were not new; no one would
pretend that the works of Chaucer, Spencer or Shakespeare were never Romantic in
spirit. Nor did the Romantic poets think of themselves in those terms, or regard
themselves as a group. Nor can one deny that in some of the great Romantic poets,
the remnants of eighteenth cemtury attitudes are sometimes unexpectedly strong.
Nevertheless, when all the nervous qualifications have been made, it remains
true that the mode of thinking of intelligent people was the leaders of the Romantic
Movement. By 1830, a man who was brought up in the neo-classical tradition, or who
clung to it from innate conservatism, was feeling very lonely in and alienated from
the literary world-indeed from his social world in general. The colour of peoples
thoughts had been changed.
It is not difficult for the modern reader to see the Romantic poets were
reacting againts; their feeling that the neo-classical tradition had exhausted itself into
cliche, repetition, staleness was understandable, even if ( in the manner of young
revolutionaries) they produced too blanket a condemnation.
Where the Augustans emphasized those features that men have in common,
the interests that bring them together, the Romantics emphasized the special qualities
of each individuals mind; they exalted the arypical, even the bizarre, they honoured
the hermit, the outcast, the rebel. The famous exchange between Boswell and Johnson
during one of their early meetings is significant in this connection. When Boswell,
mindful of Johnsons famous contempt for Scotland and its people, timidly advanced
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in its defence that it had many noble prospects he received this maeistrerial putdown;
Norway too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodicious
noble wild prospects. But sir, let me tell you the noblest prospect which a
Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England.
Nature, to Boswell, is a matter of prospects of panoramic views rather than
intimate contact; the prospects, one feels, are seen from the safety of a coach. It is of
nature that the ordinary reader will think when the subject of Romantic poetry comees
up, and by and large the emphasis is not misplaced. The natural world now comes to
the forefront of the poetie imagination-provides the dominant subject matter, is the
major source of imagery, even infiltrates into much of the theoretical writing. For
Byromn nature is a magnificient backdrop, in front of which he can make splendid
gestures.
But it was Wordsworths view of the natural world that was the dominant
influence in changing peoples sensibilities: nature to him was a source of mental
cleanlines and spiritual understanding, it was a teacher, it was the stepping stone
between Man and God.
When Shelley, in the sight of Month Blane, gave his profession in hotel
register along his route as Democrat, Philanthropist and Atheist he gave unbouded
offence to generations of tourists who followed after to proclaim atheism, there!.
With this shift in emphasis from man in society to man in solitude the very words to
express that solitude became dominant ones in poetry, and began to carry an
emotional charge very different from that they held in the eighteenth century.
It is in solitude, in communion with the natural universe, that man can
exercise that most valuable of faculties, the imagination. The Romantics were
fascinated by the faculty of imagination, and elevated the concepts of spontaneity,
inspiration, and so on.
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One last characteristic of the romantic poets may seem hardly compatiblee
with this attraction to the medieval world: they were all al least when young, radicals.
The order generation embraced enthusiastically the aspirations of the first years of the
French Revolution.
The childhood and adloscence of William Wordsworth(1770-1850) was spent
in the Lake District, in theNorth- Western corner of England, and it is imposible not
to see his poetry as influenced by the beauty and grandeur of that region. The country
people of Cumberland and Westmoreland had not been reduced to the status of
tenants or labourers, and their independence and attachment to their own native soil
also set their mark on his poetry.
In Colletridges Biographies Literaria he states that Wordsworths
contributions to the volume of Lyrical Bellads (1798) which they produced jointly
were intended to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday and to awaken the
minds attention from the lethargy of custom and direct it to the loveliness and the
wonders of the world before us. Wordsworths concern to draw at least some of his
subject matter from the life of the humble peasantry around him drew easy ridicule in
his own time, and even today it is possible to feel that he not merely fell into bathos,
but jumped in enthusiastically, in such oft-ridiculed lines as ;
For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell.
Many of Wordsworths best poems concern encounters of his own with
people or natural objects, in which he movingly conveys the very experience of the
moment, the complex of aesthethic, moral, emotional reactions that are aroused. The
high point of Wordsworths poetic creativity lasted for ten years of so. He finished
The Prelude, the story of his development as poet, thinker and man in 1805. By 1807
most of his best was done, though there were certainly upsarges of poetic creativity
was even shorter.

The case of Coleridge is more complex. In fact, everything about Samuel


Taylor Coleridgr (1772-1834) is complex. His period of poetic creativity was shorter
than Wordsworths and very much a matter of what in another connection he calls
half intermitted bursts. Of his three major, universally admired poems, only one is
complete. The contrast in style we encounter on turning from Wordsworth to
Coleridge comes largely from their differing temperaments, but also from the plan of
the lyrical Ballads: where Wordsworth was to choose subjects from ordinary life.
Coleridge was concentrate on persons and characters supernatural, or least
romantic. Where Wordsworths poetry is mediative, low keyed, only occasionaly
concentrating itself for unforgetable phrase. Coleridges is passionate, mysterious,
thrilling, seemingly written in moods of total commitment, of surrender to
uncontrollable vision.
At this point, and only at this point the poem seems to take as its subject the
poetic vision as such. For the rest it is wild, mysterious, contradictory, bewildering
a marriage of opposites, a narrative

fragment without narrative, momentarilly

suggestive, impenetrable as a totallity, yet akways strangely haunting.


The strength and imaginative commitment of the poem, it might be argued,
rescued the medieval world from the tushery of the Gothhic novelists, and opened up
new paths for the serious use of the past by later writers. It was certainly a path they
trod with enthusiasm.

CHAPTER 11
ROMANTICS AND ANTI-ROMANTICS
In 1812 Lord Byron (1788-1824) published the first two cantos of Childe
Harold and in his own words awoke one morning and found myself famous. Born
into the disreputable fringes of the aristocracy, he had previously published feeble
lyrics and an unsuccessful satire; suddenly he was the darling of the fashionable and
literary worlds, the populariser and personification of romantic values.
For childe Harold is a very odd affair indeed, it seems with features
recognizably Romantic, yet vulgarized sometimes to the point of comedy.
It is easy enough to find in Childe Harold vulgarization of almost every
Romantic preoccupation-the medieval, the outcast figure, love of nature, hatred of
tyranny, preoccupation with the remote and savage, and so on.
It was when Byron rediscovered the eighteenth century part of himselfurbane, worldly, and companionable-that he found his real mode, the discursivecomic.
Don Juan, this voice becomes a marvelous means of conveying the
personality and views of the tale-teller.
For most readers today Shelley is the poet of the shorter anthology piece, and
some of these have becomes well known as to work in a way doubly to his
disadvantage.
If Shelleys early death leaves us with some unanswerable questions about his
likely development, the even more tragic early death of John Keats (1795-1821)
leaves few queries in our mind about his stature.
Not surprisingly, the early poems of Keats reveal the influence of other poetsfleetingly that of Leigh Hunt, the radical journalist and (dreadful) poet to whose circle
Keats for a time belonged; more lastingly that of Spenser and Milton.
The early years of the nineteenth century were as notable for their novelist as
for their poets, and almost all of them, after a rather arid period for fiction, were
trying to do something new. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) had a brilliant success
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with CassleRackrent, the story of the decline of a family of Irish gentry, seen through
the eyes of their servant Thady Quirk-original both from its opening up of new areas
for the novel, social as well as geographical, and for its clever use of point of view.
Among these were Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the most popular novelist of
his day, both in Britain and in Europe, and a powerful literary influence, for good and
ill, throughout the nineteenth century.
For Scott reallyestablish the historical novels as a viable and worthwhile
fictional form, by setting the personal dilemmas of his characters against a
background of historical events, and rooting both in the on-going, densely realized
life of the whole community.
But even as the Romantic movement was its height, and perhaps because of
its decidedly fervid nature, voices were to be heard expressing doubts and
reservations. One of these voices was that of Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866),
whose satirical conversation novels made hilarious fun of the beliefs and foibles of
intellectuals of his time. Of this Nightmare Abbey is perhaps the most notable, with
its splendid pictures of Coleridge, Byron and Shelley.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) habitually mocked or was suspicious of Romantic
excesses: Do you remember . Scotts beautiful lines on the sea?Demands one of
her more absurd Romantic Enthusiasts. That man who can read them unmoved must
have the nerves of an Assassin! Jane Austens clear-eyed, realistic appraisal of life
and its possibilities, her understanding that humans must make the best of
unsatisfactory fates, that having made foolish decision they must endure what cannot
be cured, gives her novels a very different feel from the prevalent tone of the
Romantic Poets, with their all-or-nothing, bliss-or-suicide assumption.
Elizabeth Bennet is the most loved of Jane Austens heroines, and the most
witty and independent-minded.
Jane Austens view of life is a totally realistic one. She has nosentimentally,
no time for emotional excess. Though her subject is love and marriage, her books
never produce a warm glow, never for a moment aspire to the postic.
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CHAPTER 12
THE EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS
And popular usage of the word : Victorian is particularly instructive is
connotation are respectability, churh- going prudishenes, this is how the Victorian
middle class imposed and themselves on the word and of posterity., pleased abd
proud that this image or this false frent,say has endured. Victorianism was a cartion of
the middle class, an Exspression of their new self confidence. Fortunately they
found the perfect figure heads in the worty,toria and Albert, who were the nominal
leaders of society.
The moral and religious roots of

Victorianism reaches

,the eighteenth

century. By the beginning of the nineth century people to find eriters like fielding and
swift unacceptably outspoken. 1818 DrBowdler presented to his countrymen his, a
closeness between novelist and reader and invigorates all aspects of Victorian fiction.
The railways were opening up of it for inspection.
The intellectuals ,of course ,saw a very different age. Less atractiveone:the
crisis of faith became a matter of popular debate with Darwins Origin of Species in
1867. Dickens ( 1812-1870). They greatest novelist in had his first success in the year
before Victorias accession.

spanned almost exacity they fist of her reign

papers,probably the most successful fictional debut ever, looks back in many ways to
the past.
The picture of picwick himself begins in a hard, eighteenth century heart and
( in the sequence in which he isimpriesened. Concience. But a this mostly sun and
sparkle ,with very little shade. Oliver is thus not just the representative of childhood ,
symbol of all suffering humanity. When he escape ,it is to the criminal slura of
London. Into a thivers and prostituch gang run by the jewfagin. A terrible word.
Bothpickwich and Olivers are full of the exuberant cancatures made Dickens
so popular, the basis of Dickenss art as observer,The modern embarrassment that
events its eyes from physical or mental puliritichs,the firs impression we get of vanity
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fair ( 1847-1848 ) vividly alive canvas the book presents a panoramic view of English
society between 1812 and 1830 . the central focus or the book being on polite society
of one kind or another .
If the larger outlines of Amelia s life are drawn by men .Becky is one to
shape her own fate . that behind the wit .energy and charm she is ruthless .predatory
and enscrupulous cannot be denied .the reader can only greet with a cynital smile her
claim that I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year . What vaniry fair
has above ail .and what marks it off from most of Thackeray s other novel.is a superb
narrative drive . presenting a whirl of great men and smile .making history and being
caught up in it. It is this sweep and energy that we miss in such smaller successes
astendeunis .
Henry Esmond and the newcomer. It was the success of charlotte Bronte
( 1816-1655) with Jane Eyre in 1847 that established the family with the public .and
it remained throughout the century the most popular Bronte novel.all charlotte s
novels are technically unconventional .and are frequently objected to superficial
criticIsm on this account.the one novel of Emily Bronte ( 1515-1545) has every
differentvavoar . likecharloutte she shopcked .and this party because their upbringing
was in so remote and unfashionable a region that they were out of touch with the
creeping prudishness and greate of the Victorian age.
This else is play extraordinary tale is played out against a background of the
Yorkshire moors .unforgettably depicted . not ( as sometimes with hardy ) through
pages of fine writing laid on to the tale , but by mere throw away phrases. Of Anne
Bronte (1820 1849 ). Particularly Agnes grey ( 1847). Are realistic miniatures
which expose the brutalisties .physical and psychological . behind the middle class
.respect table vegetarian faade .if she is the last of the brother sisters . it is because
she was later developing a style that could encompass the everydayness of her matter.
Mrs. Gaskell wrote another industrial novel north a south which many
admire .but which schemes weakened by her attempt to be fair to both sides of the
industrial battle lines .the rest of her output is very varied .
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CONCLUSION
The discussion in this paper has revealed the part of English literature history
since the first half of the eighteenth century.
Based on the characteristics and features as well as the time of the works of
novelists or poets we can recognize or classify them.

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REFERENCE
Barnard, Robert. 1984. A Short History of English Literature. England: Basil
Blackwell.

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