19TH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE

English literature of the 19th century is marked by two great currents that well express the
thought and culture of a British Empire, protagonist of colonialism, scientific positivism and the
industrial revolution. These two currents are Romanticism and the Victorian era, and within
the framework of both great works were produced that reflected the thought and feeling of a
century of great changes that would change the course of England and the world.

Both in narrative and poetry, nineteenth-century English literature has made great
contributions to universal literature and many of its works are still valid, influencing new
generations and appearing in new media such as cinema, television series, comics even in
video games.

1. Romanticism in the British Isles in the 19th century

Romanticism is an artistic, literary and philosophical current that spans from the end of the
18th century to the first half of the 19th century (1785-1830). It is important to note that
artists belonging to this period did not consider or refer to themselves as "romantic" until the
German critic August Wilhelm von Schlegel in 1808 made a clear distinction between the
"organic" and "plastic" qualities of art. of this period and the rigidity of classicism. The
romantic movement focuses on man's relationship with nature and his roots, it is a celebration
of the natural world and individual experience with melancholy and loneliness tones, as well as
nostalgia for the past; this feeling and argument considered the modern and progress as
something destructive,

Romanticism is then a time marked by the new ideological influences of the French Revolution
(1789 - 1799) which were welcomed and supported by great English writers such as Mary
Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Men - 1790) who would later write one of the first
feminist treatises in history: Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Also of note are
William Wordsworth (The Prelude – 1850), Samuel T. Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner – 1798), John Keats (To Autumn – 1820), William Blake (Songs of Innocence and
Experience – 1789) and Lord Byron (Don Juan – 1819). It is the first literary era in which
women writers begin to flourish and to be true rivals for men; they outshine them in sales and
reputation.

The Industrial Revolution also meant a break with the traditional labor logic since factories
worked, for the first time, with machinery that would speed up production, would replace
labor in some tasks and would require a growing number of workers in many others; It is at
this moment that the social status of the workers begins to shift towards a new social class:
the proletariat. With this, there is a great emigration from the countryside to the city and
consequently the gap between rich and poor widens. Technological progress and positivism in
science generate a moral debate that would be reflected in literature: in works as influential as
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus there is an underlying moral and
ethical argument that forced us to think that human beings "He's playing god" a transgression
that would bring unpredictable punishments. Frankenstein is a novel that gathers the bases of
the Greek tragedy and expresses them in the mentioned context. Although the society of that
time continues to be deeply religious, there are mixed reactions to death, with occultism and
the figure of the ghost or the dopple gänger (the alter ego) developing tremendously.

The 19th century is also the time when the British Empire is in full colonial heyday, both in the
West with the British West Indies Company, and towards the Indian subcontinent, controlled
by the British East Indies Company. This imperialist expansion will introduce, socially and
literary, otherness as a cultural theme, becoming one of the most used themes, for example, in
the novel Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bontë, the Caribbean heritage is reflected in the
character of Bertha Mason, who is called "the crazy woman in the attic"; Also at the end of the
century, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) reveals the colonial context in Africa and
the cultural friction that it entails.

Characteristics of the poetry of Romanticism

 The concept of poetry and the figure of the poet:

The main characteristics of the poetry of romanticism are individual thoughts and
feelings since poetry is understood as the means by which the absolute truth is
generated. The poet is an individual who distances himself from his relatives due to
the intensity of his feelings and experiences, in this sense romantic poetry distances
itself from the mimetic conception, imitation of neoclassicism and places special
emphasis on creativity and the expression of unique experiences. and individual. This
experience leads to delve into the intricate paths of dreams, childhood, and thus the
supernatural and the fantastic arise, since there are no restrictions of rationalist
thought (see "The dream of reason produces monsters" by Francisco de Goya,
Capricho 44).

 Commemoration of nature:

The authors of romanticism understood nature as an element that teaches humility,

since the human being realizes that he is insignificant in the great world, delicate, and
thus, the feeling of the sublime develops. This makes it an infinite source of almost
terrifying beauty, and this produces a sensation of pleasure as long as the subject is
not in danger. Landscapes and natural phenomena are described with extraordinary
accuracy and compared to human passions.

 Spontaneity and poetic freedom:

During the century of illustration, poetry had been considered the supreme art, which
was governed by strict rules that were a legacy of classicism. This changes with the
nineteenth century, and poets begin to take into account spontaneity in writing, which
arises from the artistic impulse free of restrictions. With this vision of literary creation,
poets begin to deal with opiates and other drugs or alcohol in order to reach other
states of perception and be able to create on another level of improvisation and
freedom.

 Interest in ordinary human beings and in marginality:

For the romantics, all living beings are capable by nature to be subjects of poetic art
equally, so the poets choose incidents and situations of ordinary life, even rustic poetic
object. In this sense, poets like Wordsworth go a step further and focus on the low-
income, the marginalized, criminals, the insane, the femme fatale... and thus support a
kind of democratization of poetry. The supernatural, the fantastic (Gothic), drinks from
folk traditions, superstition and areas such as demonology, occultism and esotericism.
Thus, they are used to generate a reaction in the reader linked to the mystery of what
is hidden in the shadows and what lies beyond. The aesthetics of the setting of these
poems is always generated from uses of the distant past and inhospitable places.
  The Byronic hero and the fallacy of pathos:

Pathos is mainly used to attribute emotions or feelings to nature itself or to the

landscape; normally they are emotions of awe since the human being is, after all,
negligible in the great natural order. This is reflected in the archetype of the Byronic or
romantic hero. He is a man who has a feeling of loneliness, emotional intensity,
manipulative, intelligent, with the arts of seduction, and yet, at the end of the story, he
ends up behaving honorably. Today, in the 21st century, among the youth he would be
known as a broken boy. The most representative examples would be Rochester (Jane
Eyre), Lord Byron's Don Juan, Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

2. VICTORIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Victorian era is the period that covers the second half of the 19th century, beginning with
the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 until 1901. It actually has three periods in which
values are clearly changing:

 Early (1830 – 1848)

It is characterized by the "democratization" of literature since the book becomes a

hobby not only restricted to the upper classes, but production costs are lowered by
technical advances, so the object of the book also reduces its value. cost of sale, so
many more people can access them. It is the rise of other literary forms such as
newspapers, magazines and the novel becomes the narrative work par excellence.

 Mid (1848 – 1870)

Working conditions in factories begin to be regulated. The universal exhibitions begin

and it is a period in which the current of positivism has great influence. It is the golden
age in which Victorian values and appearances in society are very important, although
this ideology will decline and there will be a schism in faith since Charles Darwin
introduces doubt with the theory of the evolution of species. Finally it is the golden
age in the mannerist, domestic novel and psychological realism develops with George
Eliot and Henry James (Daisy Miller 1878).

 Late (1870 – 1901)

The current of skepticism spreads through the disappointment and decadence of

Victorian principles. The themes that are treated in literature do not differ too much
from those that occurred during Romanticism since the Industrial Revolution and
technological advances continued to cause moral crises and crises of faith in religion. A
very broad theme is the double standards and the hypocrisy that existed in high
society, what was accepted in public as opposed to the private sphere and intimacy,
the values and social conventions were very rigid. There was also a critical movement
towards past writers, towards the excess of subjectivity of the romantic poets and
what the literary movement tries in the Victorian era is to combine this subjectivity
with the "objectivity" that occurred in the Augustan era (first half of the eighteenth
century) since it was the era of the emergence of non-fiction with dictionaries,
grammars, essays, among others. So in Victorian literature we find the representation
of the reality of people, although in many cases, fantastic elements are used to
represent it. The main movements within Victorian literature are: Pre-Raphaelitism,
Decadentism, Aestheticism, Realism, and Naturalism. although in many cases, fantastic
 elements are used to represent it. The main movements within Victorian literature are:
Pre-Raphaelitism, Decadentism, Aestheticism, Realism, and Naturalism. although in
many cases, fantastic elements are used to represent it. The main movements within
Victorian literature are: Pre-Raphaelitism, Decadentism, Aestheticism, Realism, and
Naturalism.

The victorian novel

The Victorian novel portrays a kind of idealization of the difficulties that life presents, in which
work, perseverance, love and luck ultimately triumph. This is due to an idea or discourse of
progress: many writers shared the ideal that people could improve or change their nature, and
thus the novel should have a moral, or a series of teachings in its thematic core that explained
the possibility of «succeeding», «evolving», «progressing». Consistent with the consolidation
of modernity, literature reflects the value of the individual who can take charge of himself.

Although this type of narrative was more prevalent at the beginning of the era, as the 19th
century progressed this idealization unraveled and Victorian fiction became more complex
and, among other things, more Gothic. In fact, Charles Dickens considered that the main
function of literature was to rigorously reflect the world and thus be a mirror of the real
difficulties of life, and consequently create complex and complete characters. For example,
writers make use of symbolic objects such as mirrors, portraits, reflections, and other figures
such as dopplegangers, alter egos, to represent the hidden faces of people's private lives.

Despite the fact that the novel was the most popular form during the Vitoria era, it was the
magazines and deliveries by chapters or series that made it possible to massively publicize the
great writers who today fall within the universal canon, such as:

 Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist – 1837, Great Expectations – 1861)

 George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss – 1870)
 Lord Tennyson (The Lotus-Eaters – 1832)
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Portuguese Sonnets – 1845-1846)
 Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray – 1890)
 Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights – 1847)
 Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre – 1847)
 Anne Brontë (Agnes Gray – 1847)

victorian poetry

Poets continued to experiment with literary styles and narrative techniques in their poetic
creations, thus Victorian poetry is considered to straddle Romanticism and early modernism.
Some forms that are recovered are, for example, epic poems, narratives in length can cover
several pages, they also include the dramatic monologue, although the most representative
author of this technique is Robert Browning. On the other hand, Alfred Lord Tennyson, the
poet laureate of England uses the dramatic monologue with a more lyrical style and a poetic
voice described as "quaint" for the way it describes moods.

Influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement on literature

The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood aimed to somehow reform literature and art. It originated in
1848 with the founding of the Brotherhood by artists John Everett Millais (Ophelia – 1852),
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Beata Beatrix – 1870), William Holman Hunt (The Scapegoat – 1854).
The source of inspiration for this group of artists was their admiration for painting prior to the
Raphael era (b. 1483-d. 1520). Their values were based on the rejection of academicism, they
emphasized the artistic connections between literature, painting, sculpture... and faithfully
represented nature. The innovations advocated by the Pre-Raphaelites attracted widespread
condemnation, but gained important support from the writer, art critic, and sociologist John
Ruskin (The Garden of San Miniato near Florence – 1845).

The Pre-Raphaelites were instrumental in spreading a taste for medievalism in various aspects
of Victorian literature and the arts (particularly in the Arthurian legends). In the 1860s, Pre-
Raphaeliteism experienced a second wave, associated with the work of Edward Burne-Jones,
which turned away from the realism of early Pre-Raphaelite works and towards the
representation of myth and aestheticism. Although the origins of this current are found in
painting, the fundamental ideas spread to literature, especially poetry. Some of the most
important poets were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Tennyson (although he did not belong to the
movement, the influence is noted), Christina Rossetti, AC Swinburne (Poems and Ballads –
1866), William Morris and Walter Pater.

beautician movement

The fundamental basis of this movement was "art for art's sake", that is, art revolves around
the attractiveness of things, in this way political and social ideology loses weight in the artistic
and literary movement. He was a strong opponent of materialism and the boom that existed in
the scientific area, understanding that the way to combat these ideas was to worship the
beauty of things. Thus, he denounced the sober morality and middle-class values that
characterized the Victorian era and embraced beauty as the primary pursuit of both art and
life. One of the most important figures in aestheticism was Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost
– 1887), both for better and for worse. John Ruskin and Walter Pater (Studies in the History of
the Renaissance – 1845) also stood out.

In this sense, the lifestyle of the esthete has more to do with the Greek concept of hedonism,
the search for pleasure through the senses, so that literary texts have a thematic component in
the description that appeals to the physical, to decadence and habits such as drug use or free
sexuality, for this they exaggerated the embellishment of language with countless literary
figures (baroque literature).