3313 STUDY GUIDE
PERIOD ONE:
ROMANTICISM (1798‑1832)
I. Robert Burns
(1759‑96)
A. Biography
1. A Scottish peasant‑farmer: "cotter"
2. Writes poetry as he works as a farmer
3. 1786: Poems Chiefly
in the Scottish Dialect published
4. Becomes literary celebrity---("Heaven‑taught
Plowman")---in Scotland
5. Becomes famous for his great indulgence in wine, women,
and song
6. 1789: Appointed to Excise Office (Tax office)
7. 1791: Able finally to quit farming
8. 1795: Early enthusiasm for French Revolution sours: joins
"Dumfries Volunteers" to fight French
9. 1796: Dies of heart disease (probably related to heavy
drinking)
B. Literature
1. Known now chiefly for lyrics, such as those of Auld Lang Syne.
2. Romantic characteristics
(most of them relate to the Romantic belief that society was rotten and nature
[whatever was untouched by corrupt society] was good)
a. Wrote in common people's language ("dialect")
b. He also wrote about common people
c. His occupation as a farmer endorsed him as "close to
nature" (rather than "book-learned")
d. He embodied the natural genius: "the Heaven-taught
Plowman."
e. His love of drink and sex made him
"unconventional."
f. Enthusiasm for French Revolution
II. William Blake
(1757‑1827)
A. Biography
1. Son of London haberdasher
2. Only formal education was in art.
3. Works as engraver and painter.
4. Largely ignored during his lifetime, but in old age gains
small reputation (as an artist).
5. Life is largely conventional, uneventful, anonymous.
6. Considered by noted contemporaries to be "mad"
because his poems seemed to be "incoherent."
B. Literature
1. Almost completely unknown during his own lifetime.
2. "Discovered" in late 19th‑century
3. Today considered perhaps greatest of Romantics
a. Blake's individualistic, nihilistic view that the only
truth is the one that you create: "I must create a
system or be enslaved by another man's" he once wrote.
4. Also he believed that "the Old and New Testaments
are the Great Code of Art": he re‑interprets this code in a very
individualistic way. For example, Blake celebrated Milton not because Milton
forcefully represented the truth, but because Milton forcefully celebrated his truth.
5. Songs of Innocence
and Experience: memorable, deceptively simple lyric poems.
6. Wrote several "epic" scale poems: Milton, The Four Zoas, Jerusalem, The Book of Urizen.
7. Romantic
characteristics
a. Represents poet as misunderstood outsider
b. Represents poet as "visionary" who envisions a
new truth through his imagination
c. Was an original thinker
d. Incisive social critic.
e. "Apocalyptic" (The French Revolution, America:
A Prophecy)
III. William
Wordsworth (1770‑1850)
A. Biography
1. Grew up in English Lake District: his enjoyment of natural
splendors was to be a primary theme of his poetry.
2. Takes a degree from Cambridge, 1791.
3. 1791‑92: lives in revolutionary France: great
supporter of revolution: "to be alive then, and in France, was
heaven." Supporters of the revolution, especially in its more radical
phases, were often attacked as Jacobins.
4. ca. 1793‑94: Suffers emotional crises.
5. 1795: Receives a legacy from admirer: enough to retire to
write poetry and live with sister his Dorothy.
6. 1795‑98: Becomes close friends with Coleridge, who
styles him the "best poet of the age."
7. 1799: Returns to Lake Country (Dove Cottage). Continues
to write first-rate poetry, popularizing his reverence for nature. Many of his
poems are set in the Lake Country (Northwest England). He and his friends (Coleridge and Robert Southey, who becomes Poet Laureate) become famous as The Lake School of poets.
8. 1807: Most of his worthwhile poetry is finished; he also
begins to drift away from early radicalism.
9. 1810: Becomes estranged from Coleridge
10. 1813: His political conservatism culminates in his being
appointed Stamp Distributor for Westmoreland. Attacked by Byron and others
(even the later Browning) as "a sell-out."
11. 1830s: The mental decline of his sister greatly affects
him.
12. 1843: Becomes poet laureate (succeeds his friend and
fellow Lake School poet Robert Southey).
13. 1850: dies of old age.
B. Literature
1. Early poetry culminates in publication of Lyrical Ballads, with Coleridge, in
1798. Notable: Tintern Abbey (pp.
1432-35) and the Preface (pp.
1435-48).
2. His long poem was to be entitled The Recluse. Only completed The
Prelude, or the Growth of the Poet's Mind, his major long poem, in 13‑14
Books: it analyzes the growth of his own soul.
3. Romantic
characteristics
1. Early political radicalism
2. He is the pre‑eminent "nature poet."
Wordsworth, in his youth, popularized pantheism:
the belief that God did not step away from his creation (as the deists
believed) but that he stepped into his creation. Nature, uncorrupted by man, was
holy and mysterious because it was the home of God. Nature was temple.
3. His emphasis on "common" language for poets
(pp. 1438-40, text)
4. His emphasis on "common" people and objects as
the proper subject for poetry.
5. His esteem for the "irrational" part of man
6. His "noble" view of Man
7. His visionary moments (as in Ode to Intimations of Immortality).
8. His emphasis on the poet's "imagination"
(rather than on learning, taste, religion, or inspiration from an orthodoxly
conceived God [for Wordsworth, God spoke not in churches but in Nature]).
9. His concern with internal psychological states,
especially his own, as the poet.
10. His emphasis on the poet's own personal emotions (and
life) as a primary theme of poetry
11. Many of these characteristics are expressed in Wordsworth's definition of poetry in
the preface to Lyrical Ballads:
"Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its
origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity"
(p. 1447): emotion (rather than thought), sponataneous
(rather than learned), the poet (rather than things or society), the irrational
(rather than reason). Wordsworth goes on to say that Nature is the primary
stimulus for such emotions.
12. His infusion of the mystical into everyday life
indicates what the Victorian Thomas Carlyle will call “natural
supernaturalism.”
IV. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772‑‑1834)
A. Biography
1. Son of Devon Vicar.
2. Father dies, and he is sent to a London school, where he
becomes a precocious student.
3. Temperamental, dreamy child, with power of "inspired
talk" that never left him
4. Leaves Cambridge in 1794 without a degree (diverted by
Revolution, heavy drinking, and unhappy love affair).
5. Becomes early radical "utopian."
6. 1795‑98: Friendship with Wordsworth culminates in Lyrical Ballads.
7. 1800: Joins Wordsworth in Lake District in northwest
England
8. 1801: Becomes addicted to opium, which had been
prescribed for his illness.
9. 1806: Broken, addicted, estranged from his wife
10. 1810: Bitter quarrel with Wordsworth (they later
reconcile)
11. 1811‑1834: Lives by literary work (poems, essays,
lectures, play, and his autobiography, Biographia
Literaria).
12. 1816‑34: Lives with his doctor, who helps him to
regain health by controlling his drug habit.
13. Becomes politically conservative ("Tory")
14. Often attacked, like Wordsworth, as a
"sell-out": "Political turn‑coat, mystic humbug,
plagiarist, drug‑addict, whose wrecked promise left only a handful of
beautiful early poems."
B. Literature
1. Among his most successful poems, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kublai Khan, Christabel, "Aeolian
Harp,"
"The Lime Tree My Bower," and "Frost at
Midnight."
2. One of greatest English literary critics
3. Romantic
characteristics
a. Concern with the exotic, weird, mysterious.
b. Exemplifies Romantic view of the poet as
"haunted" and extraordinary.
c. Sense of blighted promise ("tragic" quality of
his life).
d. His philosophical writings emphasize the creative,
dominating role of the human mind in making reality (based on German
Romanticism): "visionary" poet."
e. Melancholy
V. George Gordon,
Lord Byron (1788‑1824)
A. Biography
1. Son of fortune hunter (Captain Jack) and unusual
Scotswoman
2. Father dies when Byron's three: brought up in poverty and
Scottish Calvinism
3. At 10 unexpectedly becomes 6th Lord Byron (inherited it
from distant relative)
4. Inherits Newstead Abbey (ancestral estate)
5, Attends Harrow and Cambridge
6. Lives life of fashionable Regency gentleman, one of "dissipation" (indulgence in
drink and women). The Regency, generally, is the cultural-political period of
England during the Napoleonic wars, when fashion and mores were set by man who
became Prince Regent in 1811 when his father (George III) was declared insane.
Aristocratic excess, especially in regards to sex, was the norm.
7. Begins writing verse as "gentlemanly pastime."
8. Publication of first part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "I woke up one morning and found
myself famous" because the poem. "Byronmania"
sweeps England. The poet becomes incredibly popular, especially with women.
9. Becomes center of fashionable London Society. Affairs
with several prominent society women. Though in House of Lords, he's a
"radical" (sympathizes with French Revolution and defends victims
[workers whose jobs have become obsolete because of new machines] of the new Industrial Revolution, which was
radically transforming not only the English economy but English culture.
Villages disappeared and cities boomed, as England supposedly was divided into
the very rich and the very poor..
10. To settle down, he marries a conventional heiress
Annabella Milbanke. She deserts him a year later,
causing a big scandal. Rumors range from his use of unconventional sexual
technique on Milbanke (with which London Society
sympathized) to incest with his half‑sister Augusta and homosexuality
(with which London Society did not sympathize). He's almost completely
ostracized, but the scandal fuels his already incredible celebrity.
11. 1816: Leaves the "tight little island," as he
calls it; never returns.
12. Goes to Venice: has sex with, in his own phrase,
"hundreds of young, healthy animals," most from lower classes.
13. Settles down with Teresa Guccioli,
young wife of elderly Italian Count, who accepts Byron as her lover (such
arrangements were conventional in Italy at this time).
14. Meets the Shelleys, in Pisa
(1821). Their association is denounced, by Robert Southey, as The Satanic School.
15. His involvement in radical Italian poitics
culminates in his involvement in the Greek war of independence from Turkey.
16. Dies of fever in Greece, 1824. England mourns loss of
legend.
17. Byron---along with Shakespeare and Dickens---is the most
international of English authors. He is probably the most influential British
Romantic poet writer of the 19th century.
B. Literature
1.Childe Harold's Pilgimmage
popularized possibly Byron's greatest contribution to literature, the Byronic Hero: a sensitive soul of
immense potential---handsome, fascinating, of titanic abilities---who is at war
with a hypocritical society that opposes him, often (un)successfully, because
the "fallen angel" is bedeviled by a ruinous fault. Readers, even
before the divorce scandal, identified Byron (despite the poet's disclaimers)
with his sinister heroes.
2. Writes several "oriental tales" (narrative
poems set in Asia or the mideast) and stage hits
starring the Byronic hero.
3. His most successful poem, which he never finished, is un‑Romantic:
a satire in the 18th‑century style, Don
Juan: the love affairs of this hero allows Byron to satirize English
society. Because of sexual content, it was banned by the Victorians.
C. Romantic characteristics
1. Concern with the weird, mysterious, and exotic
(especially in sexual matters).
2. View of "hero" (rather than poet) as
"haunted" and extraordinary outcast, tinged with "evil"
(which is goodness blighted by society). Also, to the public, Byron embodied
the misunderstood, outcast-poet.
3. Despite immense success and fame, sense of blighted
promise about himself.
4. Melancholy: Byron was subject to intense depression,
often expressed in his poetry
5. Celebrates "nature" (for example see several
famous passages in Childe Harold).
6. His poetry also expresses his often "radical"
political views (sympathy for oppressed, attacks on the powerful).
7. His view that society was corrupt.
8. His emphasis on the poet's own personal emotions (and
life) as a primary theme of poetry
9. Creation of Byronic hero
VI. Percy Bysshe
Shelley (1792‑1822)
A. Biography
1. Eldest son of a family of gentry (well-to-do,
respectable, quasi-aristocrats).
2. Supposed to be groomed for Parliament with his education
at Eton and Oxford. But his radical non‑conformity and
"sensitivity" gets him bullied and makes him a miserable child.
3. Expelled from Oxford for writing and distributing The Necessity of Atheism (sent it to
bishops and Oxford authorities).
4. At 18, elopes with Harriet Westbrook, despite his view of
marriage as a tyrannical restraint to individual freedom.
5. 1812: Becomes activist for Irish rights; also, back in
London, becomes disciple of radical William Godwin.
6. 1812‑1818: Shelley abandons his wife for a new
lover Mary Godwin. Shelley, guided by his principles, invites his wife to
accompany their elopement. His wife later kills herself: Shelley gets a
reputation as an unprincipled atheist, revolutionary, immoralist (though all
his actions accord with his own idealism). Shelley's problematic, complex
personality fueled the controversy: while being generous (he gave away
considerable sums to friends), mild, and forbearing, he also could be
irresponsible, cruel, hysterical, paranoid, hyper‑sensitive, inhuman, and
humorless.
7. 1818: Leaves England permanently, with Mary Godwin, for Italy.
8. 1820: Pisan Circle forms, including Byron ("the Satanic School"). During
a story telling contest, wife Mary
Shelley begins Frankenstein or the
Modern Prometheus. Prometheus was the titan who stole fire from the gods to
save mankind, for which he was punished by Zeus. He was a popular Romantic
motif.
9. 1822: Dies in a sailing mishap: he, supposedly, had
previsioned his own death. In any case, according to witnesses, a violent storm
arose; Shelley calmly refused to let his companion secure the boat, ensuring
his own death.
10. Buried in Rome.
B. Literature
1. Skillful craftsman with poetic forms and meters.
2. Poetry
a. Queen Mab
(1813): call for destruction of organized religion
b. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude (1815):
Tribulations of the poet (heavily auto‑biographical)
c. 1819: some of his best poems: Ode to the West Wind (lyric of hope that tyranny [political,
religious, and cosmic] will one day be overthrown; and Prometheus Unbound (closet tragedy), lamenting and celebrating the
archetypal rebel (Prometheus) who defies evil authority (Jupiter). After eons
of suffering (Shelley argues) Prometheus will prevail (this is a vast departure
from the original myth).
d. 1821: Adonais, an elegy for Keats; and prose A Defense of Poetry: "poets are unacknowledged legislators of
the world."
3. Romantic
characteristics
a. Ultimate non‑conformist
b. View of poet as divine creator
c. Lurid private life
d. Political radical, revolutionary outcast
e. Nature lover
f. Rejection of neo‑classical literary standards
g. Preoccupation with the mysterious (often, even as youth,
Shelley sought contact with inhabitants of another reality, such as ghosts).
h. His emphasis on the poet's own personal emotions (and
life) as a primary theme of poetry: his political beliefs, his sufferings, or
his own unique moral system.
i.Belief that society was rotten
j. Emphasis on the poet's imagination as a source of truth
VII. John Keats
(1795‑1821)
A. Biography
1. Son of prosperous London stable owner
2. Father dies when Keats is 8, mother dies when he's 14;
large inheritance tied up in courts for the rest of his life.
3. 1815: becomes apprentice to surgeon.
4. 1816: Abandons medicine for poetry, encouraged by radical
author Leigh Hunt.
5. 1816: Begins rapid development as poet.
6. 1818: Attacked by powerful reviewers as a member (along
with Hunt and William Hazlitt) of the "Cockney
School" (cockneys are lower class Londoners); beset with financial
problems; brother Tom dies of Tuberculosis; begins frustrated love affair with
Fanny Brawne; contracts tuberculosis himself by
caring for his brother.
7. 1821: moves to Italy to recover his health; dies and is
buried in Rome; he writes his own epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was
writ in water." Rumor spread that the sensitive man had been killed by a
savage review of his poetry. Actually, Keats knew he would probably die if he
tended his sick brothers, but he did it anyway.
B. Literature
1. Considered by many to be greatest of English Romantics.
2. His philosophy is still unclear: did he advocate
withdrawing into a private dream world, created by the poet's imagination,? Or did he advocate an intenser
interaction with the objective world through the use of the imagination and
through developing one's sensibility?
3. His early poems include Endymion (1818), about the shepherd loved by the Moon: "A
thing of beauty is a joy forever": Keats appears to celebrate a sensuous
enjoyment of this world, not simply through the imagination, but through experience..
4. 1819: Eve of St.
Agnes and La Belle Dame sans Merci:
exotic tales, perhaps allegories of the poet's life.
5. 1819: "Great Odes": especially "Ode to a
Grecian Urn ("Beauty is truth, truth is beauty‑‑‑that is
all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know") and "Ode to a
Nightingale."
6. At his death, leaves The
Fall of Hyperion‑‑‑meant to be his long, great work‑‑‑unfinished.
Its theme not clear, but it seems another allegory about poets and poetry.
7. Romantic
characteristics
a. Intense preoccupation with the special nature of poetry
and the poet, especially the poet's imagination.
b. Tragic life, blighted promise
c.Poet as divine outsider thwarted by society: Keats becomes the
embodiment, especially to the Victorians of the sensitive outsider (so sensitive
he was killed by a hostile review) killed by an uncaring society.
d.His emphasis on the poet's own personal emotions as a primary
theme of poetry.
VIII. Romantic Novelists
1.Sir Walter Scott
(1771-1832)
A. Biography
a. As a youth, he was fascinated by Scottish folklore and
legend, especially in ballads.
b. Trained in law, he received several important government
appointments (he was a staunch Tory)
c. Partner in a bookseller whose bankruptcy ruins him
financially.
d. Made baronet in 1820.
e. Refused poet laureateship, recommending Southey.
f. Only acknowledged his authorship in 1827.
B. Literature
a. One of the most popular European novelists of the century
b.Largely created the historical novel
c. Transformed the “dark ages: into Romantic, fairy-tale
medievalism
d. Selected Works: Lay
of the Last Minstrel (poem of middle ages), Ivanhoe (novel of middle ages), and the Waverley novels (set in
Renaissance Britain).
2. Jane Austen
(1775-1817)
A. Quiet life as daughter of country rector.
B. Wrote about the life she knew best:
genteel/gentry/country gentle-folk
C. Novels were popular with upper class readers and critics.
D. Sometimes critiqued as too limited (to issues of
gentlefolk, such as marriage)
E. More than Scott, still considered a first-rate writer (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, for example).
IX. Other Romantics:
1.Charles Lamb
(1775-1834): popular essayist (Essays of
Elia)
2.William Hazlitt
(1778-1830): Critic, journalist, lecturer, essayist. “. . . first English
writer to make a large part of his livelihood from descriptive criticism” (Oxford Companion to English Literature).
3.Thomas De Quincey
(1785-1859): Gentleman turned journalist, Confessions
of an English Opium Eater: nightmares and visions produced by his opium
addiction.
4. Leigh Hunt
(1784-1859): journalist, essayist, poet-dramatist, “Cockney School” member whose radical
politics got him jailed for “libeling” the Prince Regent, associate of Byron
and Shelley. He often now is known primarily as the original of Harold Skimpole in Dickens’ Bleak
House.
PERIOD TWO:
VICTORIANISM (1832‑1914)
I. HISTORY AND
LITERATURE
A. 1832: Great
Reform Bill and the rise of the dominant Victorian political party, the
Liberal Party (based on an
alliance between the new industrialists and the expanding middle classes with
more traditional and often aristocratic ruling classes: strongly capitalist and
imperialist).
1. Abolishes rotten boroughs; extends vote to working middle‑
class; ends rule by aristocratic oligarchy established in 1688 and 1714.
Before: of 7 million adults, only 435,000 could vote. Before, of 658 members of
British Parliament, only 234 really elected. Duke of Wellington and Tories vote
down the Bill. Riots across the country. Passed by House of Lords only when
King William IV threatens to create new lords who will pass bill. Increases
voting population by 50%; makes district lines more representative. Entire
country celebrates.
2. Marks ascendance of commercial wealthy middle classes
B. 1837: Victoria becomes Queen: longest reign in English
history.
C. 1840s: explosive, disturbing decade
1. Marked by riots and worker unrest (1848 saw revolutions
across Europe and the publication of Marx's Communist
Manifesto). In England, agitation centered on Chartism (a form of
Labor Unionism) and repeal of Corn (wheat/grain) Laws, which protected English
agriculture with high import tariffs on foreign grain. This made bread
expensive in England.
a. Six points of Chartism
(1) universal manhood suffrage
(2) secret ballot
(3) annual parliamentary elections
(4) salary for members of Parliament
(5) redistricting to reflect power of industrial centers
(6) abolition of property qualifications for members of
Parliament
b. Chartist Petitions to Parliament
(1) 1839: 1,283,000 signatures
(2) 1842: 3,317,000 signatures: 6 miles long, could not fit
into House of Commons
(3) Petitions were ridiculed and ignored by aristocratic Tory
landowners who still controlled Parliament, as well as by their opponents, the
Industrialists who owned the factories.
c. Corn laws repealed in 1846 (with help of Industrialists)
d. Most of Chartist 6 points adopted by end of century.
2. Unprecedented "lifestyle" changes caused by
technological and industrial changes, especially in regard to railways and a
burgeoning empire.
3. Intellectual trends all undermine Christianity
a. Geology, as Sir
Charles Lyell popularized in Principles
of Geology (1830–33), reveals earth millions of years old (not 6000, as
Bible indicates) and that earth evolved for millions more (not in 7 days, as
Bible maintains).
b. Impact of Higher
Criticism: emphasized Bible was formed as any other book, and the text is
in many places "corrupt," that is, parts are missing, authorship is
uncertain, and it is not completely reliable. Rational, "scientific,"
investigation of stories in Bible‑‑‑ such as Noah's Flood‑‑‑did
not occur. The Bible, then, is not inspired and inerrant. Undermines basis of
Protestantism.
c. Impact of Utilitarianism.
Jeremy Bentham (1748‑1832),
James Mill (1773‑1836), and his son John
Stuart Mill (1806‑73). "It is the greatest good of the greatest
number that is the measure of right and wrong." Everyone acts according to
self‑interest, so government should facilitate subordination of self‑ interest to "interest of the
community." Ultra‑rationalist, ultra‑materialist, strongly
capitalist. Bentham dismissed literature (as well as much of religion) as
non-useful delusion and nonsense, though J.S Mill modified this view, also
defending individual liberty. While enhancing England's political system by
ridding it of outdated, "feudal‑aristocratic" methods (its
"radical" influence), utilitarianism
also tended to measure everything by a narrow standard of usefulness, making
life colorless, narrow, and stupid (its "philistine" impact).
d. Most important, Victorian capitalist economic theory also
discredited Christianity. Economic laws ran along lines that operated according
to what Darwin would call, in relation to biology, "the survival of the
fittest." These laws were not to be tampered with or it would ruin the
economy and send the world back to the dark ages. The principle by which
citizens and their government should not attempt to interfere with the economy
was called laissez‑faire). Pity
and compassion for the weak often were seen as nonsense generated by
superstition.
e. Rise of workers: Marx (1848): "Religion is opiate of
the masses."
4. Responese to crises. Looking
for answers, the troubled English often looked to its writers, though often
insisting that these writers tell them what they wanted to hear. To reassure
themselves these were the right answers, the English public made the writer a
celebrity‑prophet‑oracle‑superstar‑sage‑"bard."
It is with the Victorians that the writer achieves his highest cultural: the Writer as Sage Cultural Spokesman. The
powerful political figure Benjamin
Disraeli (1804-81), later made an Earl, started as a novelist. Alfred Tennyson (made a lord for his
poetry) is perhaps the best example of this trend.
a. Thomas Carlyle
(1795‑1881) Work! Exploit the opportunities afforded by England being the
first industrial nation. He also is center point for reform of abuses of
capitalism: society needs to be more of a community, not simply isolated
individuals joined solely by the Utilitarian "cash‑nexus."
Center instead should be organized around "great men," such as
Cromwell was, and as enlightened, reformed capitalists should be. His
philosophy is a mixture of German transcendentalism and Scottish Calvinism.
(Carlyle is often criticized today for the irrational and "fascist"
aspects of his writings.)
b. John Henry
Newman and the Oxford
Movement (called Tractarians
because they produced a series of pamphlets called Tracts for the Times (1833‑41): Base religion on
dogmatic authority (like the Catholic Church) rather than on reason or being so
undogmatic as to include everyone in the Anglican Church, no matter what their
views on Christianity. Newman converts to Catholicism (1845), shattering the
movement. Later he is made a Cardinal.
c. John Ruskin
(1819‑1900) (and later Matthew
Arnold: see below): morality is the basis for art, and both of them are essential to a healthy society (refuting
Utilitarian claims that art and "beauty" are irrational and
irrelevant). Later (1860) Ruskin causes a public outcry by also denouncing the Utlitarian bases of capitalist economics. Nevertheless,
Ruskin's popularity rivalled that of poet Lord Tennyson's (though Ruskin was a
painter who wrote about art and society). He strongly influenced the public,
including the working class. Very popular, eloquent, "poetic" prose
style. His ideas, though, are not systematic or profound, and he flits from subject to observation. Other ideas: art should
be representation of real rather than ideal; art is a product of the whole man
rather a talent of the man. Art then becomes a matter of morality rather than
of "taste."; the artist's personality, then, is of the utmost
significance, and the artist himself was a prophet‑sage type. Ruskin's
morality was heavily Christian, though later he became "less narrow."
Also, the biography of this "Bible Christian" is one of most peculiar
in English Letters, revealing much about "Victorians" and their sages.
d. The Pre‑Raphaelites
(who admired Italian Art of Raphael [1483‑1520] and those before him but
not his many imitators). Attacking official imitation, they became official
rebels (embodied in career of Dante
Gabriel Rosetti). Flourished in 1850s. Followers of Ruskin in regard to art being an accurate description of the
"real" rather than "ideal" nature. They also were heavily
influenced by a "dreamy, other worldly" Keats and an idealized
medievalism.
e. Charles Dickens
(1812‑1870): Dickens advocated social reform, especially in regard to the working classes. These reforms, broadly
stated, are "Christian." In an attempt to make reform acceptable, he
often added sentimentality. Dickens often satirized them, but his closest
allies on this point were the Evangelicals:
people usually from the lower classes (though many made a lot of money in
"trade") who were guided by fundamentalist religious beliefs. Many
were the descendents of the puritan dissenters
(Chapel non-conformists). Evangelicals
within the Anglican Church were called "Low Church" people (as
opposed to the aristocratic High Church party). These people believed in
actively "ministering"; and often their ministering prompted them to
ameliorate the brutal conditions often endured by the London poor.
(i). Serialization: Dickens's novels appeared in popular
magazines before appearing in book form. This serialization was standard
procedure for Victorian novelists.
(ii). After attracting favorable notice with Sketches by Boz, his first great success
was Pickwick Papers (1836‑37);
other youthful successes were Oliver
Twist (1837) and Nicholas Nickleby
(1840), The Old Curiousity
Shop (1840‑41), Barnaby Rudge
(1841) and A Christmas Carol (1843).
(iii). Dombey and Son
(1847‑48) begins Dickens' mature period, which also includes David Copperfield (1849‑50), Bleak House (1852-53) and Tale of Two Cities (1859).
(iv). Dickens' outstanding attribute is his vivid
characterization: many of his characters seem more real than human beings.
There is also a fairy tale quality about them: "In a utilitarian age . . .
it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected . . . A
nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will,
hold a great place under the sun" (Dickens)
(v). Reaction of utilitarian capitalists: "Dickens'
invasion of the domain of political economy [capitalist economic theory] with
the palpable design of substituting benevolent instincts for established laws
was carelessly condoned by the statesman, legists, and economists whom he
denounced and amused" (E.P. Whipple, 1877).
D. Great Exhibition of 1851 in London: a
"World's Fair" celebrating all nations', especially England's,
industrial and technological achievements. The doubts of the turbulent 1840s
are swept away by unprecedented prosperity.
E. 1850‑1880
1. Dominated by a middle‑class/bourgeoise
"morality" that has been‑‑‑often accurately‑‑‑stereotyped
as "Victorianism": great emphasis on conformity to appearance of
adhering to expected behavioural norms concerning
manners, dress, social intercourse, and sexuality. In many ways, it is
puritanism reborn without the religion.
2. Fashionable religious stance is agnosticism: a belief that it is impossible to determine if
there is a God, but probably there isn't.
3. An increasing exaltation of "Man"‑‑‑especially
English "Man"‑‑‑as the highest form of life in the
universe. There were no angels in heaven, but there were in England, e.g.
"artists" and "men of letters" and sometimes simply women.
4. The works of Charles Darwin (Origin of the Species 1859 and Descent
of Man 1871), a scientific writer, though they contained disturbing
speculations about Man's "ape‑like" ancestors, actually
confirmed the two strongest tendencies of post 1850 Victorianism: Optimism
and a related belief in Progress. Thomas
Huxley (1825-1895), scientific writer, was a popular and powerful
public defender of Darwin’s theories. “Darwin’s Bulldog” coined the word
“agnostic” to describe his own attitude toward religion. His theories were also applied to support
capitalism, by Herbert Spencer. This view that society must conform to the
universal law of "survival of the fittest" is known as Social Darwinism. It is also at
this time that radical journalist Samuel
Smiles becomes national celebrity/self-help guru with his book Self-Help (1859) and later Thrift and Conduct.
F. 1880‑1914
1. Marked by official unshaken confidence in itself
2. "Sun Never Sets on the British Empire"
3. Victorian literature concludes:
a. Oscar Wilde
(1854‑1900), dominant creative genius of the 1890s, the most well‑known
and talented leader of Aestheticism.
i.
This period is often called the
Yellow Nineties, after a leading arts magazine of the time, The
Yellow Book. This publication often was a forum for Aestheticism: "art for
art's sake." A reaction against the Victorian insistence that art must be
useful, especially in regard to morality. Art,
according to the aesthetes, should only be beautiful, and that was enough. Walter Pater (1839-1894), a
tutor of classics at Oxford, is often cited as their chief source, though Pater
might have been more “Victorian” than the Aesthetes realized. Pater’s works, Studies in the Renaissance (1883), a
collection of critical essays, and Marius
the Epicurian (1885), an historical novel,
emphasized beauty and enjoyment at the expense of truth and righteousness.
ii. An extreme form of aestheticism was decadence. The decadents believed that beauty was
"holy" because of the sensation that it produced. They then decided
that this exquisite sensation could and should be acquired through other exotic
means, such as opium, rare liquors, exotic drugs, and illicit forms of
experience, especially in regard to sex. The title character of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray is a good
example of a decadent.
iii. Wilde himself supposedly was a secret decadent. When he
was imprisoned for sodomy, he had five "hits" still playing on the
London stage. He wrote plays (The
Importance of Being Earnest), short stories ("Lord Arthur Savile's Crime"),
novels (The Picture of Dorian Gray),
fairy tales ("The Happy Prince"), and poetry ("The Ballad of
Reading Gaol"). He dies in Paris, after his
release from prison, in 1900, a pariah. He's said to also "to have made
dying Victorianism laugh at itself. And it may be said to have died of the
laughter."
b. Thomas Hardy
(1848‑1928)
i.
Greatest Victorian novelist, after Dickens. Transformed the Dorset area of
England into fictional Wessex for
the setting of his pastoral novels (which focus on rural landowners, farm
women, laborers, and other country folk).
ii. Known for his pessimism: he believed things did not work
out the best. Instead, his characters often are destroyed in a
"tragic" sequence of improbable events, beyond their control, and set
in motion by an overwhelming but malevolent power that controls humanity
("fate" the gods, "President of the Immortals"). Hardy ends
his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge
(who dies broken and poverty stricken after a nasty series of events) with a
quote from King Lear that summarizes
his view: "As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods. They kill us
for their sport."
iii. Hardy's pessimism, perhaps because they didn't believe
it, appealed to the Victorians. But he quit writing novels after the furor
caused by Jude the Obscure. Hardy had
caused extensive controversy by his previous Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Tess, a beautiful farm laborer, is
caught in a sordid series of events‑‑‑ including,
seduction/rape and murder‑‑‑that ends in her hanging. Jude (1895) tells how the intellectual
ambitions of a laborer are thwarted by a couple of sexual lapses. The book was
denounced by critics and public as bestial and obscene. Hardy remains a
celebrity, but he restricts himself to poetry (by some considered great, others
disagree).
3. Literature 1900‑14, according to post‑war
standards (Modernism), stale, worn‑out: "Edwardian" and "Georgian" (for monarchs during this time
) are usually used pejoratively (negatively) when applied to literature.
However, many entertaining and adept writers of first class literature, if not
geniuses, emerged at this time: George
Bernard Shaw, George Gissing, H.G. Welles, A.E. Housman, G.K. Chesterton,
Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, John Buchan, and John Galsworthy.
4. Cultural issues
a. Socialism: status of lower, working classes
b. Suffragettes:
led by the Pankhursts, women and their brothers
battled, often violently, for “votes for women,” which was not granted
completely until 1928.
c. Irish question: Independence?
G. 1914‑18: World War I "The Great War":
Though England won, the war exploited processes, already at work before the
war, to destroy Victorianism. The official victory was celebrated and cultural
shifts were ignored by the status quo,
but the status quo was replaced or
died and radical changes in thinking were consolidated.
II. Authors (included in Norton Anthology)
A. Alfred Tennyson
(1809‑1892)
1. Life
a. Son of alcoholic, unbalanced clergyman, in Lincolnshire.
His 11 brothers and sisters are also somewhat strange. He later recalls that he
sometimes would go to the churchyard and beat on the sod, wishing himself under
it. (Father was embittered over inheritance going to younger brother).
b. At Cambridge, he wins Chancellor's Medal for poetry
(1829); he also joins the "Apostles" along with his friend Arthur
Henry Hallam, a leading youth at Cambridge who becomes engaged to Tennyson's
sister.
c. Early volume of poetry, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) criticized as obscure, overly
subjective, escapist. Tennyson was influenced in this direction by Keats. His
friend R.C. Trench warns him, "We cannot live in art Tennyson."
d. 1833‑1850: Long climb to the top: Hallam dies in
1833, disturbing deeply Tennyson. Falls in love with Emily Sellwood,
but is too poor to marry. He begins to refine his poetry to better suit
Victorian needs. This culminates in elegy for Hallam, In Memoriam (1850).
e. 1851: Immense succees of In Memoriam leads to his appointment as
Poet Laureate.
f. 1851‑1892: Tennyson becomes rich and famous, a Victorian Prophet, Sage, Oracle,
Celebrity‑‑‑or, as detractors maintain, mouthpiece.
Representative work is "Charge of the Light Brigade": celebration of
soldiers who are massacred because they "do their duty" in a hopeless
battle in the Crimean War (1853-56),
the major Victorian-British war (a costly thwarting of Russia’s taking over
Turkey). Also, Idylls of the King,
Tennyson's treatment of the Arthurian legends, with Arthur strongly resembling
Prince Albert (Victoria's German husband).
g. Tennyson’s response to the religious crisis: strong,
abiding faith, not unlike the faith of those who embodied Muscular Christianity, a movement that stressed, like now
the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the wholesome manliness of Christianity
(rather than it being a religion for the weak, worn-out, and effete): “The idea
was controversial. For one example, a reviewer mentioned "the ridicule
which the 'earnest' and the 'muscular' men are doing their best to bring on all
that is manly", though he still preferred "'earnestness' and
'muscular Christianity'" to eighteenth-century propriety. For another, a
clergyman at Cambridge University horsewhipped a friend and fellow clergyman
after hearing that he had said grace without mentioning Jesus because a Jew was
present. A commentator said, "All this comes, we fear, of Muscular
Christianity" (Wiki). The Reverend
Charles Kingsley, though he did not quite like it, was identified with
this outlook (1819-75). Kingsley’s most
well-known work includes Alton Locke (1849), Westward Ho! (1855), The Water-Babies (1863) and his clash with
John Henry Newman.
g. His reputation suffers serious decline in aftermath of
disintegration of Victorianism. W. H.
Auden‑‑‑modernist poet‑‑‑called
Tennyson the most musical of all English poets and also the stupidest: he
supposedly knew everything about melancholy and nothing about anything else.
His reputation has been rebuilt by scholars.
2. Works
a. Early works‑‑such as "Mariana"‑‑‑are
highly evocative (usually of melancholy) but don't "say anything."
Tennyson was forced by criticism to turn from inward lyricism to speaking to
and for Victorians on modern issues.
b. 1833‑1850: Tennyson treats typical Victorian
questions of work and struggle ("Ulysses"), the need to commit
oneself to the issues of modern industrial society ("The Lotus‑Eaters"
and "Locksley Hall"), and
the crisis of religious faith (In
Memoriam). These poems tend to betray a tension between a Victorian call to
duty and a deep‑seated desire to withdraw into a private world.
c. In Memoriam
(1833‑1850)
i.
Tennyson's masterpiece, one of the greatest longer poems in English.
ii. Genres
(a) elegy
(b) theodicy (explains "ways of God")
(c) lyric ("swallow‑flights of song"
Tennyson called them)
(d) Victorian "crisis of faith" literature
iii. Prologue, 131 Sections, Epilogue
(a) Prologue
(i) Affirmation of faith before
poem of doubt relates attainment of that faith
(b) Body of poem built about three Christmases
(i) Section 30: "sadly"
(ii) Section 78: "calmly"
(iii) Section 105: "strangely"
(c) Themes
(i) Scientific discoveries in
biology and geology merge with senseless death of a good friend to raise a
question which preoccupied the Victorians: does an omnipotent, all‑
loving God control our lives? Does man have an eternal soul? See especially
sections 54‑56.
(ii) Tennyson's response:
(1) Victorian optimism: man is part of universal progress;
one's duty is to strive and conquer
(2) Tennyson also had mystic moments when he felt the soul
of his dead friend: "proof" of an afterlife that reassured the worried
highly materialistic Victorians.
(3) See especially sections 106, 118, 131 (and Prologue, 1,
21, 27, Epilogue) for the poem's themes.
3. Victorian characteristics
a. Optimist (despite his melancholy): he believed in
progress and the unshakeable foundations of Victorian society.
b. Concern with social issues
i.
Rise of the working class
ii. Distrust of aristocracy
c. Concern with religious doubts caused by discoveries in
science and rise of materialism.
d. The commitment to struggle and faith in victory ("stiff
upper lip" and "doing one's duty")
e. His belief in the individual serving society, even at the
cost of his individualism ("Victorian Conformity")
f. Persistent anxiety that, despite outward confidence,
things were amiss: his "closet melancholia"
g. Motto: "Self‑reverence, self‑knowledge, self‑ control"
B. Robert Browning
(1812‑89)
1. Biography
a. Born to a London non‑conformist family
b. Because of his religion, he is largely educated at home
(father, a bank clerk, had a library of 6000 volumes)
c. Lives at home until he's 34, studying and writing poetry.
d. 1826: discovers Shelley: tremendous influence,
intellectually and personally (he temporarily becomes an atheist, free‑thinker,
and radical): he quickly returns to Victorian version of fundamentalism, though
still admiring Shelley.
e. 1837‑46: writes staged, but not very successful
plays. Also writes first great‑‑‑but largely unnoticed‑‑‑
poetry, heavily influenced by drama: Dramatic
Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances
(1847).
f. 1846: elopes with the famous poet Elizabeth Barrett, a
semi‑invalid bullied by her father. They elope to Italy, for her health
and to escape from her father. Browning later calls Italy "my
university."
g. 1861: returns to London after wife dies.
h. 1868‑69: Public success finally secured with Ring and the Book, a very long poem.
i.
1869‑89: Life of celebrity poet/Victorian sage, though Browning's
gregarious, down‑to‑earth, pugnacious optimism makes him a somewhat
"unliterary" literary man. His poetry becomes somewhat lacklustre.
j. 1881: First Browning Society founded: Browning becomes
very popular as the "philosopher" of "hope"
k. 1889: Burial in Westminster Abbey, 1889.
2. Literature
a. Early poetry heavily influenced by Keats, and,
especially, Shelley. He was criticized as "vague, obscure." His first
book , Pauline
(1832‑33), is a Shelleyan confessional poem that does not sell a single
copy. Browning later disowns the work, calling it "an eyesore."
b. Long narrative poem Sordello (1840) derisively
dismissed as incomprehensible by critics and readers.
c. 1836‑46: Changes from "confessional"
poetry to dramatic poetry. Distinguishes between poetry of what men do
(dramatic‑‑objective‑‑Shakespearean) and poetry based
on expressing what the poet is (confessional‑‑subjective‑‑
Shelleyan)
d. 1840s‑50s: Art matures in his writing of his
dramatic monologues, on which his reputation is based.
e. Dramatic monologues first appear in Dramatic Lyrics (1842): dismissed as difficult, obscure, "un‑Victorian"
and "coarse"
e. Men and Women
(1855): considered now his best volume of poetry: keen insights to psychology,
often abnormal psychology. Reveals Browning's great zest for examining the
lives of "ordinary" men and women, which recurs throughout his
poetry. However, his work is still coldly received by the Victorians.
f. Dramatis Personae
(1865): more dramatic monologues: also shows again his great skill in evoking
an historical place and time (usually Renaissance Italy). Starts a trend toward
admiring Browning.
g. The Ring and the
Book (1868): Browning's long poem (over 21,000 lines). Different
perspectives, presented in dramatic monologues, on a lurid Italian murder.
h. Later work (1868‑89) considered inferior.
3. Victorian characteristics
a. Very "optimistic" ("Rabbi Ben Ezra,"
"Abt Vogler"): though perhaps his
"cheerful optimism" has been seen as more superficial than it really
was.
b. Concern with challenges to religious faith, especially
from science ("Caliban Upon Setebos"): Browning energetically rebuts
these doubts.
c. Energetic, pugnacious, englishness
in much of his work
d. Dickensian interest in bizarre characters: Renaissance
artists, children, corrupt churchmen, murderers, madmen.
e. Often seen as the "intellectual poet" (opposed
to Tennyson, as the "poet of feeling") and "psychological
poet," who had all the matter while Tennyson had all the art.
f. His development of dramatic monologue, use of colloquial
diction, and use of "non‑poetic" material made him the most
influential Victorian poet for modern poets.
C. Matthew Arnold
(1822‑88)
1. Biography
a. Son of Thomas Arnold, well‑known education
innovator as headmaster at Rugby and leading clergyman of "Broad
Church" Anglicans.
b. Attends Oxford: poses as a "dandy," possibly in
reaction to his father's reputation as a serious man. (Though Arnold claimed
that he thought highly of his Rugby education). Wins prestigious Newdigate Prize for Poetry (1843), elected Fellow of Oriel
College (1845), later Professor of Poetry (1857).
c. 1847: becomes secretary to Lord Lansdowne
d. Publishes Strayed Reveller, his first volume of poetry (1849)
d. 1851‑86: marries, becomes inspector of schools
(England had a new national school system for the masses/middle classes): he
travels around England, examining schools: tedious and hard labor. Also during
this time lectures and writes, becoming England's foremost cultural critic.
e. 1857‑67: holds part‑time position as
Professor of Poetry at Oxford
f. 1883 and 1886: lecture tours of America (lecture tours
were a common way for "important men" to make "big money").
2. Literature
a. 1850s: poetry appears, dealing with loss and isolation
("Forsaken Merman," "Isolation"), the menace of a world
where religious faith was no longer possible ("Dover Beach"), and
pessimism, regret, and sterility of modern age ("Empedocles on Etna")
b. 1860s: abandons poetry (because he thought poetry was
supposed to encourage rather than to discourage). Writes literary criticism;
takes time off from grueling inspections of schools to lecture to become
England's foremost cultural critic
c. 1870s: his literary criticism merges with his social
criticism "to tame wild beast of Philistinism."
i.
Arnold believed that if the rising middle classes were effectively to control
society, they must become more intelligent. Instead they were
"philistines," a word that Arnold popularized in England: ". . .
the vulgarity, the meddlesomeness, and the grossness of the British
multitude."
ii. Becoming more intelligent meant exchanging the Bible
(which, though it had served well during its time, was outdated) for Culture
(literature, art, philosophy‑‑‑"the best that has been
said, done, and written in the world": High Seriousness: The "righteousness" of the Bible
must be emphasized. But miracles, prophecies, and other supernatural evidence
must be de‑emphasized, re‑ interpreted, or rejected. Traditional,
dogmatic, literal Christianity was no longer possible in light of Reason and
Science. Yet Arnold believed that the "civilizing" nature of religion
should be preserved; he advocates rejection of dogma and superstition for a
religion guided by reason, common sense, and intelligence (mental agility)
based upon a fluid "culture" rather than on "rigid"
religious dogma. Intelligence: "free play of the mind on all
subjects" should be the goal.
d. 1880s: returns to literary criticism.
3. Victorian characteristics
a. Intense concern with social and cultural change
b. Belief in "art" and "culture" as
pillars of society
c. Art must be moral (but not in a narrow‑minded way)
d. His skepticism about Christianity: agnosticism‑‑ the belief that since the
existence of God cannot be determined the subject should not concern us‑‑‑became
very fashionable among intellectual and cultural leaders. They regretted the
loss of faith, but saw no alternative, since religion had been refuted/replaced
by "Science" and "Reason" and "Experience"
D. Other Victorian Poets
a.Walter
Savage Landor (1775-1864). Vivid,
forceful personality, best known perhaps as the original of Boythorn
in his friend Dickens’ Bleak House.
He wrote Latin poetry, and his English poetry is often based on Greek and Roman
Models, especially epigrammatic elegance.
b. Coventry
Patmore (1823-96): Known for one poem, The Angel in the House (1854-62), a long sentimental tribute to his
recently deceased wife, which, as your textbook notes, celebrates the notion
that while the wife is the angel, the husband is the lord.
c. Lewis Carroll
(1832-1898): Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Deacon in
Anglican Church and Lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford, master of Light and
Nonsense Verse: Alice in Wonderland (1865)
and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871).
d. Gerard Manley
Hopkins (1844-89): At Oxford when Arnold was Professor of Poetry, his
tutor was Walter Pater. Converts to Catholicism in 1866 and becomes a Jesuit
priest. His poetry was not published until 1918, when he was praised as an
early Modernist, by Modernists, because of his “sprung rhythm,” a metrical form
that he invented and that seems to be free verse (though it isn’t). “Sprung rhythm is a poetic rhythm designed to imitate the
rhythm of natural speech. It is constructed from feet in which the first
syllable is stressed and may be followed by a variable number of unstressed
syllables” (Wiki).[
e. Robert Bridges
(1844-1930): Poet Laureate (1913-30) during the rise of Modernism; mentor and
much later publisher to Hopkins.
f. Edward
Fitzgerald (1809-83): Country-gentleman scholar, his loose translation
of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Persian, ca 1100) became a popular masterpiece, in part because of its
backing by the Pre-Raphaelites. Fitzgerald is an example of the
man of letters: “gentleman” intellectual in the arts scene, often
independent (not a professional teacher/professor), and often having an income
that is not primarily derived from literary activity. Such persons write mainly
criticism (and edit, publicly lecture, translate, etc. )
and generally engage in work that now is usually performed by university
professors. Another example is Thomas Macaulay (1800-59),
primarily a powerful Liberal political figure, but also a popular essayist and
historian. A final example is the Pre-Raphaelite industrialist-socialist
William Morris (1834-96): poet, romance writer, furniture
designer, essayist, lecturer, arts and crafts enthusiast. His most memorable
work might be News from Nowhere (1890), a socialist-utopian vision of
the future.
g. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909): From a
distinguished family, he was of small and bizarre appearance with strong
tendencies towards alcoholism. His best work was written early, in revolt
against Tennyson and poetry supposedly written for women and children.
Swinburne, attacking “the pale Galilean,” celebrated a deeply sensual paganism.
His best work includes Atalanta in Calydon (1865),
“Hymn to Proserpine” (1866), and Ave Atque Vale (1868).
E. Other Victorian Novelists (some not included in Norton Anthology)
1. Brönte sisters
a. Charlotte
(1816‑55), Emily (1818‑1848),
Anne (1820‑ 49): daughters of
poor Irishman (real name "Brunty") who had
somehow managed to go to Cambridge and become a curate in Anglican Church (at
Haworth, in Yorkshire).
b. Brother Branwell dies of
dissipations and failures at age 30.
c. The sisters, who had little contact with world, write.
d. Novels: Anne published Agnes Grey and Emily published Wuthering
Heights in 1848, under pseudonyms of Acton and Ellis Bell. Charlotte
published Jane Eyre in 1847 as
Currer Bell.
e. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are considered
classics. They are complex gothic romances (elements of horror, spooky houses,
dark secrets, love) heavily informed with psychological characterization.
Novels of "passion and introspection" (rather than "novel of
manners," which were popular at the time). In short, they introduced the
popularity of "the Romantic novel." Jane Eyre was an immediate success. Wuthering Heights initially was attacked as morbid and diseased:
". . . people like Cathy and Heathcliff are too odiously and abominably
pagan to suit the tastes of even the most shameless class of English
readers."
f. Emily dies of tuberculosis in 1848; Anne dies in 1849.
Charlotte, the most "intellectual" of the sisters, dies in 1855.
2. George Eliot
(1819‑80; real name Mary Ann Evans)
a. Late 1870s: "greatest living novelist."
b. Known for "domestic realism," especially of
rural lower‑class life, mixed with charm and humor.
c. Novels: Adam Bede
(1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860),
Silas Marner
(1861), Middlemarch (1872; considered
her best), and Daniel Deronda (1876).
d. Victorian characteristics
i.
From an Evangelical background, she becomes agnostic, believing that since it is impossible to know
whether God exists, it is best to avoid religion (an atheist, on the other
hand, argues that God definitely does not exist). Victorian agnostics often
believed that the need for religion is simply a part of man's spiritual nature
(and since there probably isn't a God, Man creates one)..
ii. 1854‑78: lives with George Henry Lewes, a
Victorian intellectual. In 1880, at age 60, she marries a 40 year old man.
Despite‑‑‑and in some strange way, because of this‑‑she
was in many ways typically Victorian.
iii. Often glamorizes "artist‑hero"
3. George Meredith
(1828-1909): poet (“Modern Love” sonnets [1862]), probably best known
though as a novelist, though it was a struggle in the years that lead to his
replacing Tennyson as the president of the Society of Authors. King Edward VII
requested his burial in Westminster Abbey, but it was refused because Meredith
was widely known as a “free-thinker’ in relation to religion. His best-known
novels (now) are probably Evan Harrington
(1860), The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), and The
Egoist (1879).
4. Wilkie Collins (1824-1889):
“Discovered” by his friend Dickens, Collins’ best work includes a couple of
classic mystery-intrigue novels, The
Woman in White (1860) and The
Moonstone (1868).
5. William
Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863): During his time he was the great rival
of Dickens. Now his reputation is based on one novel, the social satire Vanity Fair (1847).
6. Elizabeth
Gaskell (1810-1865): Influenced by dissent
and reform, she wrote “industrial” novels, although her most enduring work is
the pastoral Cranford (1851-53). Many
of her works were published by Dickens in his magazine Household Words; and she wrote a biography of her friend Charlotte
Bronte that was considered libelous by some (apparently those who were
perceived responsible for Bronte’s smothering existence and early death).
7. Anthony
Trollope (1815-82): Popular,
prolific novelist of the provincial high-life, especially in the Barsetshire-Palliser series. He was also a high ranking
member of the postal service.
8. Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850‑94)
a. Another prolific writer: works include adventure tales
and "horror" stories such as Treasure
Island (1883), Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (1886), Kidnapped (1886),
and Master of Ballantrae
(1889).
b. The simple surface of his stories disguise an increasing
Victorian desire to escape from a life that had become too
"civilized," rational, and suffocating. These stifled individuals
craved escape‑‑‑through sensuality or "adventure"
c. "I will now make a
confession: It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that
begot Long John Silver ... the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by
the sound, was entirely taken from you." Stevenson was writing to W. E. Henley (1849-1903),
journalist/poet/publisher/playwright, celebrator of Empire (Jingoism), whose
best poem is probably “Invictus.” Also popular in this vein were the adventure
tales of Rider Haggard
(1856-1925), such as She (1887) and King Solomon’s Mines (1886).
9. Rudyard Kipling
(1865‑1936)
a. Born in Bombay, raised in England; he returned to India as a journalist
(1882).
b. 1889: returns to England as an instant celebrity for his
tales of English adventure in India (e.g, those
collected in Departmental Ditties
(1886), Wee Willie Winkie
(1890), and Soldiers Three (1890))
and poems with the same theme (Barrack‑Room
Ballads, 1892).
c. Poet of British Imperialism: he coins the phrase
"white man's burden": the burden of Englishmen and Europeans to
civilize the dark races. A few people charge that Kipling is mouthpiece for
colonial exploitation: white people went to India not to save Indians but to
make money by exploiting a non-industrialized people, covering up this crime
with pious talk about "saving" the people from whom they were
stealing.
d. Very popular; he becomes an unofficial poet laureate.
e. 1907: becomes first Englishman to win Nobel Prize for
Literature.
E. Victorian Drama: The best plays, except for Wilde’s, are
what now are first rate TV series and movies
a. Sir Arthur
Pinero (1855-1934): drama based on “ ‘possible
people doing improbable things’” as in a modern TV sitcom, though later turning
to sentimental drama. His most well-known plays are probably Trelawny of the Wells (1898) and The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893).
b. Gilbert and
Sullivan: The most enduring of Victorian dramatists, they wrote satiric
comic operas, ridiculing Tennyson, Wilde, the British navy, melodrama, and
Japan. Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote the music, and Sir William Gilbert (1836-1911)
wrote the witty verses (the libretto). The
Mikado (1885), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878),
and The Pirates of Penzance
(1879) are just a few of their popular works.
c. See Oscar Wilde.
F. W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
(1865‑1939)
a. Biography
1. Son of a famous portrait painter, the Anglo-Irish John
Butler Yeats
2. 1890s: Pre‑Raphaelite, aesthete, founding member of
the Rhymers' Club in London. Later refers to himself as among "the last
Romantics."
3. 1900 ca.: Becomes intensely involved in Irish nationalist
politics. His poetry turns to Irish folk themes and traditions. Helps found
Irish National ("Abbey") Theatre, for which he wrote plays.
4. 1900‑1939: Intense interest in spiritualism (the
paranormal, even "occult"), especially spirits, automatic writing,
and mystical philosophies.
5. 1922‑28: Senator in Irish Free State.
6. 1923: Nobel Prize for Literature.
7. 1939: Dies in France.
b. Poetry
1. Early poetry is "Romantic": emulates especially
Shelley and pre‑Raphaelites.
2. 1900 ca.: Turns to simpler style and Irish themes. Yet
these more austere poems often express a complex mystical philosophy that Yeats
developed through contact with "the spirit world." Imitates Blake
(whom he helped popularize) in creating his own unique philosophical system.
3. ". . . beyond question the greatest 20th‑century
poet of the English language" (Norton
Anthology, 2267).
F. Edwardian-Georgian
authors
a. George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): Anglo-Irish writer, whom many consider the
best British playwright other than Shakespeare. Witty, entertaining, very successful high-class
plays of ideas. “He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize
in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938)” (Wiki). The lights were dimmed on
Broadway and the West End (London’s theatre district) when he died. His many
still acted plays include Man and Superman (1902-03),
Major Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1912-13;
later turned into My Fair Lady).
Though a socialist (Fabian Society) and a feminist, many of his provocative
ideas, which he dramatized, became outdated because of the cultural changes
caused by WWI (which identify him with, if anything, watered-down “fascism”).
b.
John Galsworthy (1867-1933): Another Nobel prize winner (1932). His
extremely readable novels include The
Forsythe Saga (1906-21), a series of five works based on the life of an
elite (rich) middle-class family much like Galsworthy’s own. He was also
elected the first President of PEN International (1921)
c. Joseph
Conrad (1857-1924): Conrad and Galsworthy became friends before they
were famous. Conrad was a Polish seaman, Józef Teodor
Konrad Korzeniowski. He did not learn English until
his 20s and only started actively publishing in his late 30s. He is often read
as a Modernist, but like Yeats, he is one of the last Romantics. His popular,
very absorbing novels are often adventure stories though often with a
psychology and pessimism that become popular only after WWI. His novels include Almayer's Folly (1895), The Nigger of
the 'Narcissus' (1897), Heart of
Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900),
Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), The
Secret Sharer (1910-“novella/short story) and Under Western Eyes (1911).
d. H.G.
Welles (1866-1946): Like Shaw, he was a very entertaining writer of
ideas and an upper-class socialist (Fabian) though he was from the lower
middle-class. Since his ideas often remained general, his works are still
widely read, especially those of science fiction, of which he is a primary
modern creator. These works are often read as “prophecies” of the triumph of
such things as space and air travel, eugenics, bio-terrorism, and a one world
order: Time Machine (1895), War of the Worlds (1898), The Invisible Man (1897). He also wrote
many first rate social-comic/satire novels: Love and Mr Lewisham (1899), Kipps: The Story of a
Simple Soul
(1905), Tono-Bungay (1909), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910). His Mr. Britling [Welles’
persona in the novel] Sees It Through (1916)
is arguably the finest high-art/popular commentary/discussion on an on-going
current event (WWI). It also points to why Modernists rejected much of
Edwardian-Georgian culture as represented by sage-writer Welles: fine, superb
discussion of an event that had degenerated into an unprecedented, senseless
slaughter.
e. John
Buchan (1875-1940): This writer too points to why Modernism was set to
destroy the vanguard of Victorianism. Like many Victorians, he started his
political and writing careers simultaneously, eventually becoming 1st
Baron Tweedsmuir (he was the 15th
Governor-General of Canada). His thirty novels include two classics of spythriller fiction and masterpieces of propaganda
: The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
and Greenmantle (1916). He was then
recruited to become public relations officer for Field Marshal Sir Douglas
Haig, “Commander-in-Chief” of British Forces in France and one of the war’s
leading butchers.
f. G.K. Chesterton
(1834-1936): Another entertaining “genius” of the man-of-letters-“great tradition”: wrote essays and criticism as well as
popular, witty, provocative comic novels. This 1924 newspaper quote is typical:
"The whole modern world has divided itself into
Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making
mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from
being corrected” (cited in [Wikipedia). However, in the totalitarian cultural shadows cast by
WWI, being witty is not enough, and Chesterton is often considered to be an
important minor writer. Chesterton himself becomes a Catholic. The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is
perhaps his best novel: extremely witty parody not only of spy novels but the
ideology that was spawning spy culture. The
Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) is still very
readable; and his Father Brown mysteries are still popular, a series in the
Sherlock Holmes tradition of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
g.Arnold
Bennett (1867-1931): Another
popular first-class novelist: his Clayhanger series
of novels (1910-1918) and Old Wives Tales
(1908) represent prosperous middle-class life in the “Potteries District”
of England (his own background). Appointed Minister of Propaganda for France
during WWI. Virginia Woolf attacked him for representing a
Victorian-gentlemanly writing tradition.
h. George Gissing
(1857-1903): His best novel is probably New
Grub Street (1891), about the life he knew well, that of struggling
novelists (he wrote 23 novels, often “to pay the bills”).
i.
A.E. Housman (1859-1936):
From 1892 to 1936, a professor of Latin at University College in London then
Cambridge. His poetry often is in the tradition of Latin lyrics: short, graceful,
somber, and epigrammatic. A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922) are all he published. He also is an interesting
example of what it was like for some to be gay in late
Victorian/Edwardian-Georgian Britain.
j. World War One writers: The War Poets, soldier poets who began as conventionally
Georgian celebrants of patriotism (e.g. Rupert
Brooke, d. 1915) but ended as embittered quasi‑modernists
(Wilfrid Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert
Graves, the most significant of this group). Probably the best-written
English novels about the war are Welles’ Mr.
Britling Sees it Through (very intelligent
propaganda); Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End (1924-28, and recently a miniseries), an often grim,
dispassionate account; and the poet Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston's Progress (1928-1936), a trilogy about his
becoming a war-hero then a conscientious
objector---his letter refusing to return to duty was read in Parliament.
PERIOD THREE:
MODERNISM (1914‑Pres)
I. T(homas) S(tearns)
Eliot (1888‑1965)
A. Biography
1. Born in St. Louis; descended from prominent New England
Puritans and educators.
2. After graduating from Harvard, goes to France and then
settles in London.
3. 1914: Meets Ezra Pound, another expatriate American, who
at the time was an active "promoter" of the avant‑garde. Pound
promotes Eliot. This collaboration would continue, in some form, the rest of
their lives.
4. 1917‑25: Works for Lloyds Bank. During this time he
publishes perhaps his best work. He also edits influential literary magazines
and becomes a tentative satellite of Bloomsbury.
5. 1925‑1965: Leaves his tellership
at Lloyds Bank for Faber & Faber, a new publishing house that becomes very
powerful by publishing Eliot and other modernist poets.
6. 1926: Declares himself, "classicist in literature, anglo‑catholic in religion, and royalist in
politics." His poetry days are, mostly, over (works primarily on Four Quartets, a long meditative and
mystical poem of religion, published 1935‑42).
7. 1926‑1965: writes verse plays that are inferior in
quality to his non‑dramatic poetry but successfully produced, especially
in late 40s and 50s. He writes very influential literary criticism. He also
becomes a famous neo‑Christian cultural critic.
8. 1935/38: In effect, commits his wife to a mental
hospital.
9. 1948: Awarded Nobel Prize.
10. 1965: Dies. Eliot concludes a life that resonates with
breakdowns, "nerves," hospitalizations, "bad health," heavy
drinking, avowals of his love for music‑hall culture, and the
"mystery" (Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot:
A Life p. 233) of his treatment of his wife, and, as commentators also
point out, the misery and suffering she had caused him.
B. Literature
1. According to the introduction to Matthew Arnold in the Norton Anthology, Eliot's poetry
"provides a record of a sick individual in a sick society" (2075).
Eliot, however, claimed to reject Romanticism (in which a poet expresses his
individuality). Eliot wrote that poetry was not expression of, but escape from
personality.
2. Eliot was a radical innovator in English poetry, which,
in 1914, was very "English." Eliot popularizes French poetic
techniques (developed by Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and exploited by Jules Laforgue and Stephan Mallarme).
a. Stream of
(un)consciousness: attempt to record the continual workings of the
unconscious mind. Since this is a pre‑verbal level, stream of
consciousness writing often seems disjointed nonsense.
b. Elliptical style: leaves out connections and transitions,
logical and linguistic.
c. Free verse:
poetry that does not adhere to a formal pattern of rhyme scheme or meter. This
is the dominant verse form of 20th century.
d. Dramatic monologue (owes more to the French than to
Browning)
e. Investigation of unusual psychological states, often in
regard to sexual behaviour.
f. His poetry is intentionally difficult verse, even
obscure.
g. Sophisticated, often comic or self‑deprecating
irony (a reaction to the moral poetry of earnest Victorians).
h. The themes of ennui, cultural degeneration, despair.
3. John Donne: Donne was a neglected poet before Eliot and
the modernists re‑popularized him. These techniques Eliot said he derived
from Donne:
a. Specific images, concrete diction
b. Metaphysical conceit: Reacting to the commonplace nature
imagery of the Georgians, Eliot often used metaphors based on his knowledge of
forgotten forms of literature or difficult aspects of 20th‑century
philosophy.
c. A model for thinking, intellectual poetry
d. Difficult allusions
e. The use of dramatic monologue in general.
4. Objective correlative: a term invented and
popularized by Eliot, in a reaction to Victorian narrative poetry. Poetry was not
to narrate a story, but record perceptions and sensations as they purportedly
happen to the speaker, who for Eliot was not the poet. Poetry was to act as a
telescope on a single event (walking the street, entering a room, meeting
someone, eating lunch, or looking at a car) rather than as canvas to represent
an entire story. Objective correlative was a set of events, things, or a
situation that revealed/symbolized a psychological state, correlating with a
particular emotion.
5. The Wasteland
(1921‑22)
a. Because of the characteristics listed above, the poem was
initially ridiculed or dismissed as unreadable by many critics.
b. It, however, quickly becomes probably the most
influential English poem of the 20th‑century. Its message of cultural
decay appealed to a post‑WWI England. Eliot's critique of Victorianism‑‑‑
artistically and culturally‑‑‑was in many ways in the right
time at the right place. "Victorianism" was in many ways discredited
by the badly botched victory of WWI.
c. The poem attracted the interest of reactionaries who
blamed England's woes on the excesses of Victorian liberalism and were
convinced that to restore a prosperous order, the country should be ruled by
elites. Eliot's poetry‑‑‑in the most avant‑garde
fashion‑‑‑confirmed the moral bankruptcy of Victorian
liberalism (the Liberal party‑‑‑the great party of
Victorianism‑‑‑fragmented with WWI). Modernism, in fact, in
many ways becomes a formidable force for intellectual Fascism, a powerful political movement that emphasized a popular
leader at the head of a strong government as a response to the problems created
by WWI, which was blamed on middle-class liberals, socialists, and weakling
aristocrats. The co‑writer of The
Wasteland, and a founder of modernism, Ezra Pound broadcasts for the fascists
during WWII and is later charged with treason by the USA, escaping with a plea
of "insanity." Eliot, though ostensibly too aesthetic to be
political, becomes a powerful cultural symbol of respectable reaction. Another
modernist, the artist/writer Wyndham
Lewis, was also known for alertness to the threat (to art,
"culture," political stability) that he perceived in an English
working class stirred by Bolshevism and
swayed by labor unions, and in a middle class that was perceived as the carcass
of Victorian philistianism. Bolshevism is a name for the radical Marxism of Lenin’s Bolsheviks, who had overthrown the Tsar to
create the Soviet Union. Marxism---“Scientific
Socialism”---was based on the writings of philosopher-scholar-actvist Karl Marx (1818-1883), who argued that history was
based on a class struggle that must be won by the workers who will create a
dictatorship of a proletariat without private property. Lewis founded the Vorticist movement, heavily indebted to the
European (especially Italian) movement Futurism.
Started right before WWI and active until WWII, Futurists celebrated action and movement, the more violent and
faster the better, whether in cars or planes or any other new technology. Many Futurists became enthusiastic Fascists.
d. The Wasteland uses the mythic‑symbolism
of the Grail Quest/Fisher King to recount in flashes of related vignettes the
sterility of modern life. Eliot and Pound present this theme with memorable
free‑verse, arcane allusions, telescopic imagery and episodes, and some
foreign phrases. The ability to detect fundamental (archetypal) patterns in a
work of art is known as archetypal
criticism, which is a type of Formalism/Structuralism,
a perspective that stresses the “skeleton”/basic structure of art rather
than its surface content (for example, nearly all stories have the basic form
of antagonist vs. protagonist, with variations like Father vs Son, Hero vs
Nature, Savior vs. Society, etc.). For example, the The Wasteland's representation of the sterility of modern spirituality
enacts a pattern that can also be found in medieval stories of the Grail Quest,
which in turn enacts a pattern that can be found in pre‑literate stories
of a mythical Fisher King. This emphasis on the patterns that structure or
generate the work‑‑‑ rather than on how the works relate to
society or the authors what they "mean"‑‑‑is called
structuralism (in linguistics, structuralism is the application of the
idea of generating sub‑structure to literature).
II. James Joyce (1882‑1941)
A. Biography
1. Born in Dublin. Irish Catholic, both of which he later
attacked.
2. "By 1902, when he received his A.B. degree, he
already was committed to a career as exile and writer" (textbook, page
2487).
3. He goes to Paris (1902), then back to Dublin (for his
mother's funeral), then to Switzerland, and then back to Paris again, where he
lives from 1920‑40.
4. Despite fame as a writer, he ekes out a living as a
language teacher, receiving extra money from an array of sponsors. He also is subject
to physical ailments, including loss of the sight in an eye. In his later
years, he's troubled by daughter's mental illness.
5. Ulysses
(usually considered his best work, and the best novel in English of the 20th
century) was banned in 1922 as obscene in England and America. In 1933, a US
District Court decided the book was not obscene.
6.He reputedly had a difficult but amiable personality. Also
he was a heavy drinker and wrote, purportedly, while he was drunk.
B. Literature
1. Dubliners
(1914): compelling stories, traditionally told, of Dubliners. It was ublished after great delays. The original publisher
destroyed the work because he feared libel suits.
2. Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916): a less traditionally told novella.
3. Ulysses (1918,
1922)
a. Vast and revolutionary (in form) novel. The novel
recounts one day in Dublin (June 16, 1904). The novel is loosely based on The Odyssey (Ulysses is the Roman name
for Odysseus). In The Odyssey,
Odysseus is reunited with his son Telemachus. In Ulysses, the father‑figure Leopold Bloom is (re)united with a
son‑ figure, Stephen Dedalus. Many of the incidents in the book are
comic/ironic/profound translations of incidents in The Odyssey.
b. The Norton
Anthology summarizes the book on pp. 2488-90.
c. Joyce represents a common day's life in Dublin with
complexity, subtlety, vivid and exact detail.
d. Radical literary innovations
i.
Extensive use of stream of consciousness:
attempt to record the pre‑verbal level of thinking makes it difficult.
ii. Much of the novel anticipates surrealism (formally founded in Paris, 1924). The novel switches
from scene to scene without connection, transition, or comment. Normal logical
sequence and definition vanishes. Reality becomes dreamlike, working on several
levels and from several perspectives simultaneously (the levels of modern
Dublin and ancient Greece being only the most obvious). Instead of meaning
disappearing, it multiplies, freed from the restrictions of logic. No
definitive perspective is created, as the work represents the Relativism of the new physics based on
Einstein’s theories (the laws of physics are not uniform but depend on time and
place and factors such as speed-velocity). This use of myth also points to Formalism/Structuralism, Also, the layering
of a scene with multiple perspectives links Joyce with Cubism, a visual arts movement headed by Pablo Picasso. Ulysses also includes elements of Dadaism, a WWI era (1915-early 1920s)
arts movement that emphasized the arts as a toy, with emphasis on the
child-like, the random, the anti-logical. For example, the novel’s first page
is mostly the letter “S.”
iii. Joyce had a greater linguistic talent than probably any
writer of English since Dickens. His exuberant use of words to represent the
unconscious and the flux of daily experience revealed the language's enormous,
untapped potential.
iv. Joyce's record of living includes sexual impulses and
visits to the bathroom. These caused the book to be denounced as obscene.
III. Bloomsbury
A. Bloomsbury is
a fashionable area in central London that includes the University of London and
the British Museum. From 1905 until WWII, "Bloomsbury"
often denoted an extremely influential avant‑garde group of
artists/writers/thinkers who became identified with the area, often meeting at
Virginia Woolf's Bloomsbury house. These people included Lytton Strachey
(biography), J.M Keynes (economics), Clive Bell (art critic), Roger Fry (art
critic), and E.M. Forster (novelist). These rich, respectable people were in
rich, respectable revolt against "Victorianism." Virginia Woolf, a
writer, was the daughter of the typical Victorian man‑of‑ letters,
Sir Leslie Stephen. Not really modernist artists, they helped popularize
modernists, such as Eliot and Joyce.
B. They were especially instrumental in promoting Freud. The
complete edition of Freud's works is edited by L. Strachey's brother. Many of
the Bloomsburyians, though respectable, were also
unconventional sexually.
IV. W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden (1907‑1973)
A. Biography
1. He was from an upper middle class English family (his
father was a doctor); he graduates from Oxford.
2. After briefly teaching school, he lives as a fashionable
"leftist" intellectual in the 1930s.
3. 1930: his first poetry book is published by Faber. It
establishes Auden as leading young English poet. He also writes several
political plays, inferior to his poetry. His fellow "committed left‑wing
poets" include Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day‑Lewis, and Stephen Spender, probably the most
important of Auden’s associates. His political commitment culminates in his
work for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War (1936). The Republicans
lost.
4. In Jan. 1939 he emigrates to the US (he becomes an
American citizen in 1946). This leaving England on the eve of war, his
"left‑wing" political stance, and his homosexuality, make Auden
unpopular with many English. Nevertheless, he returns to England in 1956 as
Professor of Poetry at Oxford.
5. 1945‑1973: life of serious celebrity as "great
Anglo‑ American poet."
B. Literature
1. Extremely skillful at versification, both traditional and
free verse.
2. His early radicalism, which produced satire and comic
verse aimed at the remnants of Victorianism, gives way to liberalism and
attempts at modernist philosophical observation. Also, the implied Christianity
of his 1930s verse becomes an overt official Christian element in his later
work. This later work is often seen as inferior.
3. Modernist characteristics
a. His early verse presents England as an industrial and
psychological (rather than Eliot's spiritual) wasteland. Auden's solutions are
Marx and Freud. Freud was the psychiatrist‑philosopher who founded psychoanalysis. Freud emphasized the
unconscious motivation for behavior. This unconscious (reposited
in the Id) was often filled with thoughts and desires that the conscious (the
ego) refused to admit into consciousness because of the personality's exalted
self‑concept (the super‑ego). These repressed thoughts and desires
were usually of a sexual nature. Their repression caused psychological
dysfunction (neurosis [mild disorder] or psychosis [serious disorder]).
b. The tone of his poetry is "tough," terse,
serious, ironic, and unsentimental. The stance of the Victorian Sage is
rejected for that of a citizen of a modern industrial state. Artist as Hero
gives way to the Poet as Technician.
c. Variations of dramatic monologue and metaphysical
wit/conceit. Auden's metaphors are often new and striking.
d. An emphasis on articulating perceptions and sensations
rather than on story‑telling.
e. Concern with sexual behaviour.
4. His poetry is more varied but also more uneven than
Eliot's (he wrote much more poetry than Eliot).
5. Good examples of Auden's poetry: "Look,
stranger" (p. 2686) and "Lullaby" (pp. 2690-91); and "This
Lunar Beauty," "Casino," "Out on this lawn I lie in
bed," and "Oxford" (not included in the book).
6. His poetry was widely imitated.
V. Dylan Thomas (1914‑1953)
A. "Welsh‑poet," who couldn't read or write
Welsh.
B. His poetry seems very "Romantic" when compared
to other major 20th‑century poets, i.e. his poetry seems an expression of
his own views and feelings often using evocative nature imagery.
C. He also lived the role of "the reckless Romantic
poet": a comparatively uneducated poet from the wilds of Wales who drank
hard and pursued women and wrote about it. As the textbook states (p. 2698),
some people were amused by this behaviour, while
others saw a sort of rustic oaf acting out his fantasy of "the artist's
life."
D. His poetry readings were purportedly "magic"; recordings
are available in many bookstores.
E. His poetry in many ways defies description. His vast use
of the language is not as capacious as Joyce's, but sometimes as effective.
F. He wrote only about 100 poems.
VI. Other Earlier Modernists
A.Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
1. Often considered a “late modernist” because his major
works---Endgame (1955-57) and Waiting for Godot (1948/49)---were written after WWII.
2. From affluent Anglo-Irish middle-class, lived like his
friend Joyce in Paris for most of his life (Waiting
for Godot first being written in French).
3. Works as decorated member of French Resistance during WWII.
4. In 1945 changed his concept of art: Joyce had taken “art as
knowing” as far as it could go. Beckett would focus on not knowing. In his most
well-known play (Waiting for Godot)
nothing happens.
5. Beckett often is associated with minimalism. This (Post-)Modernist movement emphasizes getting rid
of all non-essentials, in plot, scenery, everything.
6. Won Nobel Prize in 1969.
B. D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
1. Son of coarse miner father and genteel and
demanding-though-loving mother.
2. His treatment of sexual issue causes many problems, and
he was often denounced (and at least once prosecuted) for obscenity.
3. He was also skeptical about industrial society, liberalism, socialism, and
vehemently against the war (and was married to Frieda von Richthofen,
the Red Baron’s sister.
4. Leaves England in 1919 for many places including France
and New Mexico. He dies young, of TB.
5. His masterpieces are Sons
and Lovers and The Rainbow,
novels that explore heterosex with “uncanny
psychological precision and intense poetic feeling” (Norton, 2315). Heavily symbolic with few “messages,” the works
record/represent/create rather than .
C. Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
1. Born into British upper-class, father a publisher,
attends Oxford.
2. 1920-1940: gains fame and praise for “light”
satire-novels of fashionable/”fast” life of upper class
young adults (e.g. Decline and Fall
(1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934)).
3. Conservative and upper-class, he converts to Catholicism
in 1930.
4. Friend of Randolph Churchill, he serves as commando in
WWII
5. WWII provides basis for his more serious---but still
often satiric---work, Brideshead Revisited and his Sword of Honor trilogy.
6. Probably the major “traditional”/modernist British
novelist. Known as a “stylist” as well as a satirist, he wrote many works
(including journalism), and probably all of it is first-rate.
D. J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
1. Read the Wikipedia entry for a common experience in WWI.
2. Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies at Oxford (1925-59)
3. Though not often included in textbooks, his works might endure
as rare epic achievements.
4. The Hobbit (1936)
and Lord of the Rings (1954-55) are
based on his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture.
VII. Post‑WWII Literature (sometimes called
"post-modernists")
A. Often very good writers, they lack the force and innovation
of pre‑WWII modernists.
1. Literature is controlled by being subsumed as part of the
entertainment industry.
2. Rise of newer media in creating and popularizing new
ideas, especially film (movies), TV, and radio (rock music), though these media
aren't nearly as powerful in England (because of government control) as in the
US.
3. In general, tighter and non‑official methods for
managing culture in a "global village," in which sudden cultural
shifts (often associated with artists) in one region can affect the entire
world, in an age of nuclear weapons, deadly chemicals, designer diseases, and
other forms of mass terrorism.
B. Post WWII authors
1. George Orwell (1903-1950): maverick socialist, imperial
civil servant (in Burma), anti-authoritarian, anti-communist. Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1948) are classics of dystopian
literature. Also a dystopian classic is Brave
New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), grandson of Thomas Huxley
and affiliate of Bloomsbury.
2. Ted Hughes (1930-98): Poet laureate, 1985-98. Poetry
often realistic record of natural processes, often brutal. Best work, though,
is often considered to be the mythic Crow.
Also, his marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath (1932-63) receives
extensive interest.
3. Tom Stoppard (1937---
): writer of comedies that retell classic stories/genre/history;
received several Tonys and an Oscar.
4. Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Oxford graduate and librarian,
poet of a supposedly dismal post-imperial, post industrial
Britain. Identified with “The Movement,” a group of British writers (including
Donald Davie, Thom Gunn, and Kingsley Amis) who countered “modernism” with a
more “English” poetry. These are sometimes linked with the Angry Young Men,
another 50s movement: “the "Angries"
included writers mostly of lower-class origin concerned with their political
and economic aspirations. They included John Osborne (whose play Look Back in Anger is a basic "Angries" text), Harold Pinter, John Braine, Arnold Wesker and Alan Sillitoe” (Wikipedia). Refused offer to
become poet laureate in 1985 because of sickness.
5. Harold Pinter (1930 –2008): Nobel prize winner. His best-known plays
include “The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he
adapted for the screen” (wiki).