Victorian Age LITERATURE Prof.ssa Cynthia Tenaglia
The Victorian Age The novel • There was a communion of interests and opinions between the writers and their readers. • The Victorians were avid consumers of literature. They borrowed books from circulating libraries and read various periodicals. OnlyConnect ... New Directions
The Victorian Age The novel was the best way to convey a picture of life lived in a given society and to question it. • Novels made their first appearance in instalments on the pages of periodicals. • The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between «right» and «wrong», light and darkness. OnlyConnect ... New Directions
The Victorian Age • The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was the town. • It was realistic • Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of characters and achieved a deeper analysis of their inner life. OnlyConnect ... New Directions
Victorian Novel • Novels of mannersWilliam Tackeray • Humanitarian novels Charles Dickens • Social problem novelElisabeth Gaskel • Fantastic novels still linked to Romantic and Gothic tradition Bronte sisters • Nonsense Lewis Carrol • Adventure novels R. LouisStevenson • Bildungsroman • Exotic Novels RudyardKipling • Crime Novel Oscar Wilde Conan Doyle
Victorian Literature is often divided into 3 stages: • Early -Victorians • Mid-Victorians 1860- 1880 • Late-Victorians : last 20 years of Victorian Age and Edwardian Age
Early Victorian writers • The Novelists identify themselves with their age • they felt to have a moral and social responsibility • They analysed their society paying attention not to offend the moral code of the period • Their purpose was didactic : they saw in the novel a way to correct the vices and weakness of the age.
Novels’ main characteristics: • Published in instalments they were cheaper and also read by the lower classes • episodic structure • excessive length • obliged to maintain the interest so the reader went on buying the periodicals • too many details, coincidence and incidents as the writer could modify the story according to the necessity and success • the development of SENSATIONAL to catch the attention, to create suspense and expectation
Wilkie Collins • Make them laugh • Make them cry • Make them wait
keep in mind that the readers were mainly from the middle class and they wanted to read just to entertain themselves and their family
Mid-Victorian • the Bronte sisters • George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans ) • Elisabeth Gaskel
Late-Victorian or Anti-Victorian Reaction • the sense of dissatisfaction and rebellion prevailed • a new sort of realism which rejected any sentimental and romantic attitude; it focused on the clash between man and environment, his dreams and their fulfilment, illusion and reality • the writers were critical and attacked the superficial optimism and self confidence of the age , a more pessimistic view
THE CHARACTERS • The Individuals are increasingly portrayed as alienated from the world in which they live and powerless to alter their destiny • The characters’ interior world, their dreams, illusions and despair, becomes more important than the alienating and mechanical external reality
Anti-Victorian Reaction literary movements • Realism: reproduction of the reality without idealizing it ( as the Romantics did) • Naturalism: total objectivity and scientific approach to Literature • Aestheticism: Art for Art’s sake • Decadentism: Art is superior to nature, the finest beauty is that of dying and decaying things
Realistic Novel • Different from the mild realism of the first phase • In France Honore de Balzac, Stendhal who analysed the human beings in their psychological and moral complexity
Naturalistic novels • It started from POSITIVISM , in France, with its faith in reason and science • Zolà describes the Urban setting in a scientific way
Naturalism:Thomas Hardy George Eliot Mary Anne Evans • Theories of Darwin • Man conditioned by heredity,environment, circumstances • Deprived of his free will • At the mercy of an indifferent fate • No longer responsible for his actions because these were conditioned by forces beyond his control • to be realistic they focused on the worst aspects of life • The writer had to be objective as a scientist
Italy • Verismo developed with Verga and his pessimistic view, describing the world of peasants. Like Thomas Hardy , he thought that it wasn’t possible to change the destiny of people, there is no social function in art, literature couldn’t change the reality but only to reproduce it.
Aesthetic movement and Decadentism • England : Oscar Wilde • France: Balzac with “ Les Flour du Mal” • Italy : D’Annunzio and Pascoli
