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A. Connections between the Renaissance and the Victorian age

1. You can notice a similitude between the Renaissance and the Victorian age: the development of humanism
in the Renaissance and that of science in Victorianism by a return to Hellenism ( Ancient Classicism)
through the Age of Reason ( Neo-Classicism ) for the Victorians.

2. The taste for Hellenism also reached Victorians through a Romantic filter: they were interested in ruined
ancient villas and temples.

3. Walter Pater’s theory of sensuous aestheticism developed in Studies in the History of the Renaissance
(1873) speaks about the knowledge of beauty reached by feeling and pleasurable sensations. In this way,
he filters a long tradition of Romantic, Renaissance & Ancient Classical approach to life through the
senses.
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance, the Preface: “to know beauty, one must have a certain
kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by it, because beauty cannot be defined by abstract
notions.”

4. In 1517, Martin Luther initiated the Protestant movement against the Catholic church asking for its moral
revival (Reformation). In the same century and the next, the Catholics fought back, trying to restore,
revive their lost power (Counter-Reformation).
As if in a mirror, the 19th c. witnessed a religious struggle between the Anglicans & the Non-Conformists,
between the Evangelicalists and the Catholics, etc. The Oxford Movement in England attempted to bring
back some of the first Christian precepts of the Catholics, this way fighting against the weaknesses of the
Anglican clergy.

5. In both the Renaissance & the Victorian age a contrast between Hellenism and Christianity (Hebraism) is
felt. Matthew Arnold speaks about this contrast when referring to the 19th c. Britain in his essay Culture
and Anarchy, chapter 4 called Hebraism and Hellenism (1869):

Hebraism and Hellenism: both approaches have the same goal: man’s perfection or salvation.
Hellenism aspires to get rid of ignorance by means of reason & see reality in its beauty, as it
was believed to be.
With Hebraism, the beauty of life cannot be felt completely, man cannot perfect himself because
of sin.
Each of these perspectives were more powerful at times & represent contributions to the
human spirit.

. (from Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy: (chapter 4) Hebraism and Hellenism)

To get of one’s ignorance, to see things as they are, and by seeing them in their beauty, is the simple and
attractive ideal which Hellenism holds out before human nature; and from the simplicity and charm of this
ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the hands of Hellenism, is invested with a kind of ease, clearness and
radiancy. Difficulties are kept out of view, and the beauty and rationalness of the ideal have all our thoughts.
“The best man is he who most tries to perfect himself, the happiest man is he who most feels that he is
perfecting himself"”, said Socrates...

Hebraism, on the other hand, has always been severely preoccupied with an awful sense of the impossibility
of being at ease with God; of the difficulties which oppose themselves to man’s pursuit or attainment of that
perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully. But how can one get rid of ignorance when there is
something which spoils all our efforts? This something is sin; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as
compared with Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills the whole scene
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B. Renaissance ideas filtered by Romantic and Victorian perspectives:

1. Man is in the Centre of the Universe

a/ The Darwinian theory : man at the top of the animal kingdom. A theory which very well sustained the
19th c British Imperialism (started by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16 th c). The British man- the conqueror of
civilisations, the tamer of wilderness, the elitist leader.
Examples:
Joseph Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books (1894 and 1895)1
Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations ( the definition of the gentleman )
George Bernard Shaw’s Devil’s Disciple (1901)

b/ Man creating the perfect society: UTOPIA.

A Renaissance inheritance going back to Thomas Morus’ Utopia (1516): all should work and share equally:
universal education, lands, goods and have religious toleration.
The 19th c socialist William Morris wrote A Dream of John Ball (1886-87) and News from Nowhere (1890) in
which he built a utopian socialist commonwealth in England.
In 1621, Robert Burton’ s Anatomy of Melancholy was published in which he established that man could get
rid of melancholy by means of hard work, duty & serious behaviour. Victorian utilitarianism will make good
use of this source influencing the literary activity of several writers:
Charles Dickens’ Hard Times
Thomas Carlyle ( for whom work means everything)
Walter Pater: in La Gioconda, a chapter from his Studies in the History of the Renaissance, where he
expresses the idea that the work of art contains within all the past & future development of art.

c/ The Renaissance, influenced by the ancient Greek approach of the world, places man in the centre He
can know everything in the world through reason or/ and through feeling (CARPE DIEM).
Walter Pater will defend the idea that the world should be explored through the power of the senses so that
the moment could be fully felt. His theory influenced:

Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning

In the poems Ulysses (by Tennyson) and Prospice (by Browning) the speaking voices share the idea
that one should die gloriously, being aware of it, watching and feeling the transition from one
dimension to another.

(from Prospice)
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and (from Ulysses)
forbore, Come my friends,
And bade me creep past. ‘ ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my PPush off, and sitting well in order smite
peers T The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
The heroes of old, T to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's OOf all the western stars, until I die.
arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.

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Kipling had imperialist persuasions, which were to grow stronger with the years. They were bound up with a
genuine sense of a civilizing mission that required every Englishman, or, more broadly, every white man, to bring
European culture to the heathen natives of the uncivilized world (Britannica 2003)
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Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde will give a negative connotation to Pater’s theory by demonstrating that
living to the brim brings one to self-debasement and corruption (The Picture of
Dorian Gray - 1891).

G. M. Hopkins. Hopkins,deeply preoccupied by religion, will turn Pater’s Carpe Diem into a
frenetically sensuous religious poetry ( CARPE DEUM: feeling God completely,
getting drunk with Him).
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire that breaks from thee then, billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
(from The Windhover)

d/ The Renaissance turns man into a creator, a Titan who dares challenge God, sometimes playing God.
This perspective is reduced in Victorianism to the part the author plays as the creator of his world: the
Victorian novelist becomes authoritarian, omniscient and very much in control of his characters and plot. He is
the “God” of his book and the universe he creates represents a microcosm, a mirror of the world at large.

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

the author “governs” the reader, the same way the character Jane
Eyre finally controls and governs Rochester, her blind husband.

William Makepeace Thackeray

At the end of Vanity Fair, the author, becomes the puppeteer that controlled the “play”, the
show of his puppets- the characters.

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or,
having it, is satisfied?—Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our
play is played out.

Charles Dickens No matter the novel he writes, he knows everything & he is everywhere, he
voices
his own likes and dislikes, telling the reader what to think, what to conclude.
His didacticism is obvious.

Browning and Tennyson

Browning, in My Last Duchess, Fra Lippo Lippi and Tennyson, Ulysses use the dramatic
monologue technique to hide their feelings by putting a mask between themselves and readers.
The mask is the voice of a character who speaks to some interlocutor in the poem or directly
addresses the readers in order to persuade them of something. In this way, by means of a
character, the poet tries to control his interlocutors imposing his own piece of truth onto them.
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e/ The loss of faith in God in the Late Renaissance (the 16th c) leads to the loss of faith & trust in Man, in
his own power to master the world, control his destiny, play or challenge God.
Hence, we come across his feelings of melancholy, doubt, hesitation expressed in Pico della Mirandola’s and
Leonardo da Vinci’s words that “Man is a God in ruins”. He has godly aspirations but limited powers (drama
of the limit).
In Victorianism, some authors seem to realise and distrust their power to master everything by means of point
of view: they introduce two narrators that keep the distance from the fictional truth, each counterbalancing the
other’s perspective.
In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights the story of Heathcliff and Catherine is told by a servant, Nelly Dean,
and a townsman, Mr. Lockwood.
Charles Dickens combines the omniscient point of view of his own voice with the very personal approach of
Esther Sommerson, a character in Bleak House.

f./ The Renaissance idea that “Man is in the centre” turns in the Victorian Age into “Woman can also
be in the centre”.
For the first time, she finds the power to fight for her own rights as an equal to men in society. She becomes
important and powerful as a creator (Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, George Eliot). It is the beginning of gender studies.

2. The World as a Stage

The Renaissance people considered the whole world a stage on which men were actors interpreting a part
given by a Director (God) in the theatre play of life. Drama represented the most important genre of the epoch.
In the 19th c, they felt the need to dramatise the novel, poetry and even the essay.

a./ In the novel, there are sudden appearances and disappearances reminding one of the entrances and
exits in plays (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights)

b./ Mary and Charles Lamb change plays into novels: Tales From Shakespeare (1807)

c./ In poetry, we meet the dramatic monologue strategy by means of which poets comment on the epoch
expressing their feelings, at the same time protecting themselves in a period that did not encourage outbursts of
passion. In this way, they also challenged the reader to embark upon a dialogue and debate on the matter under
discussion.

d./ In the essay, with some authors as Carlyle and Pater (to a certain extent), the reader comes across a
strongly rhetoric style which reminds one of the drama.

(from Thomas Carlyle’s The Hero as Poet)

How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and
delineation he will give of it,- is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance
is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the true
sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must understand the
thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like
join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the
man say, Fiat lux— Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he
accomplish this.
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3. William Shakespeare
The Victorians made use of Shakespeare’s plays since he was a point of reference in the English culture.

a./ They magnified and glorified the image of Shakespeare, because his creation gave power to the English
nation. The culturally splendid past was again brought into the present in order to reinforce it.
In 1840, Thomas Carlyle wrote On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History.

In a chapter called The Hero as Poet, he (Carlyle) says that a nation can speak through the genius of a
poet or a writer. Italy has Dante, England has Shakespeare who is the king that no Parliament, time or
chance can dethrone.

Matthew Arnold has a poem named Shakespeare (1844), in which he highly praises the Renaissance
playwright.

b./ The Victorians also reduced Shakespeare’s work to middle class and children’s understanding:
Mary, Charles Lamb (Tales From Shakespeare).
In 1811, Charles Lamb writes an essay On the Tragedies of Shakespeare in which he advises people that it is
better to read Great Will’s plays than to see them enacted, because actors and directors destroy the essence of
the plays.
Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the fragment with the Victorian approach on Hamlet.

The late king of the country not only appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but
to have taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also carries a ghostly
manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, too, with an
air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. It was
this, I conceive, which led to the Shade’s being advised by gallery to “turn over!”- a recommendation which it
took extremely ill…
The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, was considered by the public to have too much brass about her; her
chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist
being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as “the
kettledrum”…
Whenever that undecided Prince Hamlet had to ask a question, the public helped him out with it. As for example;
on the question whether “twas nobler in the mind to suffer”, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining
to both opinions said “toss up for it!”. (from Great Expectations)

c./ In the previous century Voltaire called Shakespeare “a drunk Barbarian”. As if in a mirror, the 19th c
George Bernard Shaw minimised Shakespeare by mocking at him in the play Caesar and Cleopatra.

THEODOTUS [with much presence of mind] The King permits the Roman commander
to enter!

[Caesar, plainly dressed, but wearing an oak wreath to conceal his BALDNESS…]

d./ Shakespeare’s themes of mistreatment and abandonment were used both by poets and painters:
Browning’s poem Caliban upon Setebos offers the author the possibility to assume the voice of an enslaved
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character that meditates upon some God’s creation and upon the injustice of it. Other examples: Mariana by
Alfred Tennyson (influenced by the character Mariana from Measure for Measure).
(from Tennyson’s Mariana)
……………
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said;
She said,’I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!’

In painting:
Ophelia by John Everett Millais
Claudio and Isabella by William Holman Hunt
Mariana by John Everett Millais

4. Renaissance Italy on the Theme of Art

Robert Browning on:
a./ painters: Andrea del Sarto, Fra Lippo Lippi
b./ musicians: A Toccato of Galuppi
c./ personalities: My Last Duchess, The Bishop Orders His Tomb

I (from My last Duchess)

……..I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.