ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY

1. ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY Lecture 4: Victorian Criticism

2. Romantic Period (1798-1870) (Romantic proper till 1832) --characterised by the mixture of romantic and realistic features-- Realistic Period (1870-1914)

3. Victorian Age - period of great contrasts • great economic progress • development of the iron- and steel industry, communication system • prosperity of the middle-class, big ‘Victorian’ families • the growing of the British Empire • unhealthy living of the workers • mass poverty, workhouses, child-labour • unemployment due to the appearance of machines • 1832: Reform Bill was issued, gave political rights (franchise) to the middle-class (men) -- bourgeoisie

7. Values of the Victorian Middle-Class • utilitarianism: principle of usefulness (Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith) • hypocrisy of business spirit, profit-oriented capitalism • sense of responsibility: moralising attitude towards the lower classes • snobbery: imitating the manners of the aristocracy (e.g. Jane Austen’s and Thackeray’s novels) • Evangelicalism: Bible-reading, obedience – great shock of Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) with the idea of evolution, survival of the fittest and natural selection

8. John Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848) • admired the past and true craftmanship • attacked commercialism, mechanisation, industrialisation, and mass production – all these meant a threat to art and culture • influence on Victorian poetry (Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson) • the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood • protested against Victorian ugliness and formalism • idolised medieval art before Raphael • symbolic, visionary style (also mysticism) • Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet-painter; John Everett Millais; John William Waterhouse; Holman Hunt; +William Morris (father of English applied arts, socialist)

12. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869) • middle-class origin; he felt the urge to educate ‘the mob’ • first true cultural critic with his main aim: perfection of humanity • ”Sweetness and Light” (64A): • on the ”harmonious perfection” of poetry and healthy culture (see Horace’s ”dulce et utile”; bee vs. spider in Swift’s Battle of the Books) • ironic criticism of ”narrow and inadequate” ideals of English Puritanism (cf. morality vs. material wealth)

13. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy,”Doing As One Likes” Song Quiz • ”the central idea of English life and politics is the assertion of personal liberty” (64B) • emphasis on freedom and its dangers: the ”drifting towards anarchy” (cf. anarchy in the UK) • question of responsibility: the higher classes are not concerned about the ”masses” • the working class, ”the stronghold of our national idea,” is ”raw” and ”uncultivated” – and now wants to break free -- should be educated!! (65)

14. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ”Porro Unum Est Necessarium” (”but one thing is needful”): Hellenism vs. Hebraism (66-7) • ”strength, sweetness and light” of Greek art, Greek Beauty (cf. Greek spirit) • more relaxed about rules and differences • It has ”spontaneity of consciousness” • ”fire, strength, fanaticism” of Puritan religion (faith&work) • the Puritan believes in his possession of ”the one thing needful,” lacking tolerance • it cultivates ”strictness of consciousness” • for Puritans, the free playful spirit of Hellenism is needed to live a perfect, complete life through/in arts and poetry (naively highbrow?)

15. Walter (Horatio) Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) • forerunner of ”Art for Art’s sake” (or l’art pour l’art) movement • aestheticism:conscious separation of the artistic and social-political functions of literature by emphasising solely its aesthetic value • exaggerated admiration of beauty (amorality!) • impact on decadence at the end of the century (fin de siècle) – Oscar Wilde

16. Walter (Horatio) Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) • in ”Preface,” he revolts against abstractions in art (68) • beauty cannot be defined as it is ”relative” • a critic should express his ”impressions”: what a particular work of art means to him (e.g. CP70, Leonardo’s La Gioconda is said to be a vampire, keeping the secrets of eternal life and her ”unfathomable smile”) • a critic, with a ”certain kind of temperament” (cf. sensibility), is to pay attention to the ”special impression of beauty and pleasure” a work can give (68B) • his subject is the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century, as it presented ”the outbreak of the human spirit,” with talented artists and philosophers’ ”breathing a common air” – ”a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all alike communicate” (69A)

18. Walter (Horatio) Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) • ”Conclusion” was left out in the 2nd edition (scandalous!) • our physical life is in ”perpetual motion”, we are ”renewed from moment to moment” • similarly, ”our inward world of thought and feeling” is in constant flux / change • impressions are flickering in our ”flamelike” existence • ”To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” (71B) • instead of theories, get as many experiences as possible ---

19. Pater’s artistic credo • ”Some spend [their life] in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest […] in art and song. For our one chance lies […], in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, […]. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire ofbeauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most.” (72A)

20. Late Victorian Period (1870-1901) • time of disillusionment and pessimism in Hardy’s realistic fiction (cf. fatalism in Tess of d’Urbervilles) • great variety of trends in 1890s: symbolism (Yeats, +Poe!), aestheticism (Wilde, +Poe!), Gothic (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), sci-fi (H. G. Wells), psychological novel (Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) • Oscar Wilde embellished Pater’s aesthetic doctrine, claiming the importance of beauty and the amorality of art: e.g. ”art is lying,” ”all art is useless” BUTThe Picture of Dorian Gray has a ‘moral’ ending? (”ethical beauty”)

21. Le fin de siècle and decadence (1890s) • ‘the end of the century’ was characterised by general disillusionment, typical of a civilisation grown over luxurious (‘beautiful’, ‘sick’, ‘perverse’ tendencies) • decadence is an umbrella term, referring to Impressionism and Symbolism under French influence (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and French painting) • Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899): ”Decadence is an interlude while something more serious was in preparation.” • Symbolism: revolt against realism and naturalism, an attempt to spiritualise literature

22. W. B. Yeats, ”The Symbolism of Poetry” (1900) Symbol • symbolists aimed at representing ideas and emotions by indirect suggestions – growing more powerful in history • in a symbol the concrete object is used to suggest others (even abstract notions) – essence of poetry! • it is more subtle then with the metaphors (e.g. ”The Tyger) • emotional (trance of rhythm) vs. intellectual symbols (evoking ideas or ”ideas mingled with emotions”, e.g. the cross, crown of thorns, rose, the moon, the forest etc.) • ”the soul moves among symbols and unfolds in symbols when trance, or madness, or deep meditation has withdrawn it from every impulse but its own” (e.g. Blake’s Songs) + one step to Freud’s dream language

23. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ”The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) • link bw. Romantic and Victorian ages • decadent features: morbid sensitivity, extreme individualism, hostility to bourgeois reality, ethical indifference, cult of beauty • influence of l’art pour l’art and French symbolism – his essay on the poetic composition of ”The Raven” (1845)

24. Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Philosophy of Composition” ”Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem […] Beauty […] is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem.” ”That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful.” ”Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness […], which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul”.

25. Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Philosophy of Composition” 1 a step by step process of writing (quite anti-romantic): • length should be decided (100 lines good for one sitting) • ”choice of an impression, or effect”: Beauty! • melancholic tone is the most poetic • Central point, pivot, cornerstone of the poem: the refrain - ”nevermore” is perfect (repetition) • the voice of the bird of ill-omen utters the refrain • topic is death of the beloved • form is to be a dialogue of the bird and the lover

26. Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Philosophy of Composition” 2 8. the climactic stanza was written first; then the preceding ones backwards 9. versification and rhythm (trochaic, alliterations) 10. setting of space and time: the chamber at night and the bird flies in from the stormy forest (other elements added, e.g. the bust of Pallas) 11. the ‘story’ invented: the lover in his self-torture keeps asking questions from the bird and gets the refrain with the most sorrowful final conclusion of not meeting his Lenore in another world and he is fated to mourn her (and their love) + ‘transcendentalist’ reading of the poem, making the Raven an emblem (”emblematical of Mournful and never ending Remembrance”)

27. Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Philosophy of Composition” 3 `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floorShall be lifted - nevermore!