The Victorian Age Socio-political, Literary and Intellectual Trends

Main Tendencies in Victorian Novel, Poetry and Drama

Victorian period (1832-1901)

 1830-1880- The High Victorian Period (Early and Mid Victorian)
 1880-1901 – The Late Victorian Period

The most recognised authors

Poets
 Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Robert Browning
 Elizabeth Barret Browning
 Matthew Arnord
Novelists
 Charles Dickens
 Willam Makepeace Thackeray,
 Charlotte Bronte
 George Eliot
 Thomas Hardy

Peculiarities of Victorian Outlook

 the world started to be perceived as alien,
 an individual became aware of his own displacement, there slowly appeared an anxiety for
the future and a yearning for the lost values of the past,
 the alienation of the individual in the anonymous and mechanized crowd,
 the individual lost its central position,
 the only true view was called "objective”,
 true knowledge focused attention on the observed facts,
 the ideals of chastity and strict moral codes,
some attempts at a deeper analysis of the psyche of an individual, but the majority of the Victorian
writers portrayed the man of action rather than the man of recollection, reflection or meditation

The novel of manners

Anthony Trollope Doctor Thorne
George Meredith Emilia in England
Charlotte, Anne, Emily Brontë The Professor, Agnes Grey, Wuthering Heights,
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South, Round the Sofa
George Eliot Scenes of Clerical Life ,Adam Bede

Realistic novel
Charles Dickens Oliver Twist
William Makepeace Thackeray Barry Lyndon
Main Victorian poets
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
James Thomson
Robert Browning
Edward Lear
Lewis Carroll
Christina Rossetti
John Henry Newman
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Francis Thompson

Drama
historical drama
Tennyson's trilogy: Queen Mary, Harold, Becket
Robert Browning Colombe's Birthday
Charles Algernon Swinburne’ trilogy Chastelard, Bothwell, Mary Stuarl
melodramas
Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Lady of Lyons
Dion Boucicault (naturalistic dramas)The Colleen Bawn
Ibseism, the interest in manners
Thomas William Robertson Society, Home,
Henry Arthur Jones Saints and Sinners ,The Dancing Girl
Arthur Wing Pinero Sweet Lavender,
comic operas
William Schwenck Gilbert
Arthur Sullivan Princess Ida, The Gondoliers

American literature of
the late XIX - early XX century
Realism (1865-1910)
and Naturalism (1900-1914
The focus in literature
 ways that fictional characters were presented in relation
to their external world
 how much control mankind had over his own destiny

Romantic writers (R. W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau) celebrated the ability of human will to triumph over
adversity.

Realists (Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James) believed that humanity's freedom of
choice was limited by the power of outside forces.

Naturalists (Stephen Crane and Frank Norris ) argued that individuals have no choice because a
person's life is dictated by heredity and the external environment
How did the literary movements portray their characters
Movement Perceived the individual as

Romantics a god
Realists a simple person
Naturalists a help less object

American Realism
realistic writers set their stories in specific American regions, rushing to capture the "local colour"
drew upon grim realities of everyday life, showing the breakdown of traditional values and the
growing plight of the new urban poor

A literary technique practiced by many schools of writing.

A subject matter - the representation of middle-class life.
A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of
documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy.

American Realists
William Dean Howells
Rebecca Harding Davis
Henry James The Ambassadors
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Joseph Kirkland
E. W. Howe
Hamlin Garland
John W. DeForest

Basic characteristics of American realistic novel and short story

 It renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail.
 A character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the
subject. Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in
relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.
 Class (middle class) is important.
 Humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply
reacting to it
 Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of
naturalistic novels and romances.
 Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-
of-fact.
 Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or
intrusions diminish as the century progresses.
 The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain.
 The use of symbolism is controlled and limited; the realists depend more on the use of
images.
Naturalism
 apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings
 a philosophical position: human beings are "human beasts."
 characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings

Naturalistic novel
 the lower middle class or the lower class
 fictional world is commonplace, not heroic
 qualities of people are usually heroic or adventurous, and associated with acts of violence
and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and culminate in desperate
moments or violent death
 characters are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance
 urban setting
 techniques and plots: the naturalistic novel offers "clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life" drama
that is often a "chronicle of despair"
 themes: survival, determinism, violence, and taboo
 The conflict: "man against nature" or "man against himself"

The most outstanding American Naturalists

 Stephen Crane
 Frank Norris
 Jack London
 Theodore Dreiser
 Sinclair Lewis
 Upton Sinclair

Poets of the era

 William Vaughn Moody
 Sidney Lanier
 Emily Dickinson