Victorian Age

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Victorian Age

• LITERATURE

Prof.ssa Cynthia Tenaglia
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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.

Only Connect ... New Directions
3
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.

Only Connect ... New Directions
4
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.

Only Connect ... New Directions
5
Victorian Novel

• Novels of manners William Tackeray
• Humanitarian novels Charles Dickens
• Social problem novel Elisabeth Gaskel
• Fantastic novels still linked to Romantic and
  Gothic tradition Bronte sisters
• Nonsense Lewis Carrol
• Adventure novels R. Louis
  Stevenson
• Bildungsroman
• Exotic Novels Rudyard
  Kipling
• Crime Novel Oscar Wilde
• 
  Conan Doyle

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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

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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.

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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

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Wilkie Collins

• Make them laugh
• Make them cry
• Make them wait

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• keep in mind that the readers were mainly from
  the middle class and they wanted to read just to
  entertain themselves and their family

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Mid-Victorian

• the Bronte sisters
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans )
• Elisabeth Gaskel

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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

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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

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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 Arts sake
• Decadentism Art is superior to nature, the
  finest beauty is that of dying and decaying
  things

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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

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Naturalistic novels

• It started from POSITIVISM , in France, with its
  faith in reason and science
• Zolà describes the Urban setting in a scientific
  way

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NaturalismThomas 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

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Italy

• Verismo developed with Verga and his pessimistic
  view, describing the world of peasants. Like
  Thomas Hardy , he thought that it wasnt possible
  to change the destiny of people, there is no
  social function in art, literature couldnt
  change the reality but only to reproduce it.

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Aesthetic movement and Decadentism

• England Oscar Wilde
• France Balzac with
• Les Flour du Mal
• Italy DAnnunzio and Pascoli