VICTORIAN AGE.......

INTRODUCTION..........




The beginning of the Victorian Period is frequently dated 1830, or alternatively 1832 (the passage of the first Reform Bill), and sometimes 1837 (the accession of Queen Victoria); it extends to the death of Victoria in 1901.Though strictly speaking, the Victorian age ought to correspond with the reign of Queen Victoria, whichextended from 1837 to 1901, yet literary movements rarely coincide with the exact year of royal accession or death. From the year 1798 with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads till the year 1820 there was the heyday of Romanticism in England, but after that year there was a sudden decline.


Wordsworth who after his early effusion of revolutionary principles had relapsed into conservatism and positive opposition to social and political reforms, produced nothing of importance after the publication of his White Doe of Rylstone in 1815, though he lived till 1850. Coleridge wrote no poem of merit after 1817. Scott was still writing after 1820, but his work lacked the fire and originality of his early years. The Romantic poets of the younger generation unfortunately all died young—Keats in 1820, Shelley in 1822, and Byron in 1824.

Background

Within the Victorian Period, two other literary movements,

In 1848, a group of English artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." It was the aim of this group to return painting to a style of truthfulness, simplicity, and religious devotion that had reigned prior to Raphael and the high Italian Renaissance.

The Aestheticism and Decadence movement of English literature grew out of the French movement of the same name. The authors of this movement encouraged experimentation and held the view that art is totally opposed "natural" norms of morality.

Overview

In general, Victorian literature deals with the issues and problems of the day. Some contemporary issues that the Victorians dealt with include the social, economic, religious, and intellectual issues and problems surrounding the Industrial Revolution, growing class tensions, the early feminist movement, pressures toward political and social reform, and the impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on philosophy and religion.

Major Poets

Elizabeth Barrett occupies perhaps the highest place in popular favour. She was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. Elizabeth’s volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. She is remembered for poems like How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856). She wrote her own Homeric Epic the Battle of Marathon: A Poem. Arnold has occupied for many years an authoritative position as critic and teacher, similar to that held by Ruskin in the world of art. He was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Arnold published his second volume of poems in 1852, Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. In 1853, he published poems: A New Edition, a selection from two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. In 1854, Poems: Second Series appeared; also a selection, it is included the new poem, Balder Dead. In 1867, Dover Beach depicted a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848, with William Holman Hunt and john Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists an writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister. He worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri’sLa Vita Nuova.

Major Novelists

Charles Dickens was perhaps the most popular novelist of the period. His early works such as the Pickwick Papers (1836) are masterpieces of comedy. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for caricature: Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield (1850), Great Expectations (1861). A Christmas Carol (1843) is the popular story of Mr. Scrooge visited by the four Christmas ghosts. Jane Austen (1775-1817) shared the chronological time with the Romantics, but she shares some of the features of Realism. She has a unique talent and cannot really be assigned to any group. Her novels (Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816)) remain as popular and critically acclaimed as ever. William M.Thackeray (1811-1863) wrote Vanity Fair (1847), a satire of high classes in English society. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1890) might be the most realistic of these writers: Middlemarch (1874). Anthony Trollope (1815-1888) wrote novels about life in a provincial English town. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a very pessimistic writer who wrote stories of people in the countryside (the fictional county of Wessex) whose fate was governed by forces outside themselves (which connects him to Naturalism). Jude the Obscure (1895), Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891). The Brontë sisters wrote after Jane Austen but are the most Romantic of the Victorian novelists, particularly Emily Brontë (1818-1848), who wrote Wuthering Heights (1847), the epitome of the Romantic novel, wild passion set against the Yorkshire moors. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) wrote Jane Eyre (1847), a love story of great realism. Walter Scott started out as a writer of Romantic narrative verse and ended up as a historical novelist. He wrote several historical novels, mainly about Scottish history. Ivanhoe(1819).

Prose:

As we have noted during this age the output of the novels and poetry was remarkable on the other hand prose writing was also rich. This period has produced many outstanding prose writers and critics and social reformers like Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold etc.

Thomas Carlyle- ‘The french Revolution’

Ruskin -‘Un to the last’

Arnold’s –‘Perfect to the poem’



Conclusion.......

The Victorian Age, therefore, exhibits a very interesting and complex mixture of two opposing elements—Classicism and Romanticism. Basically it was inclined towards classicism on account of its rational approach to the problems of life, a search for balance and stability, and a deeply moral attitude; but on account of its close proximity to the Romantic Revival which had not completely exhausted itself, but had come to a sudden end on account of the premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats, the social and economic unrest, the disillusionment caused by industrialization and material prosperity, the spirit of Romanticism also survived and produced counter currents.



Reference.......

http://literarism.blogspot.in/2010/09/victorian.html

https://englishliterature99.wordpress.com/periods-of-english-literature/



W.J.Long history of English literature