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The sixty years commonly included under the name of the Victorian age present many dissimilar features. Yet in several respects we can safely generalize.
1. Its morality : Nearly all observers of the Victorian age are struck by its extreme deference to the conventions. To a later age these seem ludicrous. It was thought indecorous for a man to smoke in public and for a lady to ride a bicycle. To a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the grossness of the earlier regency, and the influence of the Victorian court was all in its favor. In literature it is amply reflected. Tennyson is the most conspicuous co placement sir Galahad and King Arthur, dickens, perhaps the most representative of the Victorian novelists took for his model the old picaresque novel. But it is almost laughable to observe his anxiety to be ‘moral’. This type of writing is quite blameless but it produced the king of public that denounced the innocuous jane eyre as wicked because it dealt with the harmless affection of a girl for a married man.
2. The Revolt : Many writers protest against the deadening effect of the conventions. Carlyle and Matthew Arnold in their different accents were loud in their denunciations thackerary never tired of satirizing the snobbishness of the age and bowing’s cobbly mannerisms were an indirect challenge to the velvety diction and the smooth self satisfaction of the Tennysonian School. As the age proceeded the reaction
strengthened. In poetry the Pre-Raphaelites, by Swinburne and William Morris proclaimed no morality but that of the crtist’s regard for his art. By the vigour of his method Swinburne horrified the timorous and made himself rather ridiculous in the eyes of sensible people. It remained for Thomas hardy to pull a side. The Victorian veils and shutters and with the large tolerances of the master to regards men’s actions
with open gaze.
2. Intellectual developments : The literary product was inevitably affected by the new ideas in science, religion and politics. On the origin of species (1859) of Darwin shook to its foundation scientific thought. We can perceive the influence of such a work in Tennyson’s. in memoriam in Matthew Arnold’s meditative poetry and in the works of Carlyle. In religious and ethical thought the Oxford movement as it was called was the most note warthy advance. This movement had its source among the young and eager thinkers of the old university and was headed by the great Newman who ultimately (1854) joined the church of Rome, as a religious portent it marked the widespread discontent with the existing belief of the church of England as a literary influence it affected many writers of note, including Newman himself, roude, Maurice kingsley and glad stone.
3. The new education : The new education acts, making a cetian measure of education compulsory, rapidly produced and enormous reading public. The cheapening of printing and paper increased the demand for books so that the production was multiplied. The most popular form of literature was the novel and the novelists responded with a will. Much of their work was of a high standard so much so that it has been asserted by competent critics that the middle years of the nineteenth century were the richest in the whole history of the novel.
4. International influences : During the nineteenth century the interaction among American and European writers was remarkably fresh and strong. In Britain the influences of the great german writers was continuous and it was championed by Carlyle and Mathew Arnold. Subject nations in particular the Italians, were a sympathetic theme for prose and verse. The browning Swinburne, morris and Meredith were deeply absorbed in the long struggle of the followers of garibaldi and Cavour and when Italian freedom was gained the rejoicings were genuine.
5. The achievement of the age : With all its immense production, the age produced no supreme writer. It revealed no Shakespeare no Shelley nor a Byron or a Scott. The general literary level was however very high and it was an age moreover of spacious intellectual horizons, noble endeavor and bright aspirations.
Works Cited
Name:
Joshi Riddhi
Topic:
salient Feature of The Victorian Literature
Roll
no: 30
Paper
no 6: Victorian Literature
M.A:
Sem-2
Enrolment
no. : 2069108420180028
Year:
2017-19
Submitted
to:
S.B.
Gardi Department of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar
University
Introduction- The Victorian age is believed to be from 1850-1900
when Victoria became Queen in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered
upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of
the romantic age. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron and Scott had passed away.
Keats and Shelley were dead but already there had appeared three disciples of
those poets who were destined to be far more widely read than were their
masters. Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems
appearing in almost simultaneously with the last works of Byron, Shelley and
Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication of his collected poems,
two volumes, that England recognized in him one of her great
literary leaders. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had been writing since 1820.
Browning had published his Pauline in 1833. But in
1846, when Bells and Pomegranates were published, people began reading his
works and started appreciating him. A group of pose writers had emerged in like
Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle and Ruskin. In this age, the long struggle of the
Anglo- Saxons for personal liberty was settled and democracy was established.
The house of Commons becomes the ruling power in England; and a series of new
reform bills rapidly extend the suffrage, until the whole body of English
people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them. Because it is an
age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of
growing brotherhood and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in
1833; but in the middle of the century, England awoke to the fact that
slaves are not necessarily Negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold
like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women and little
children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial
slavery. Because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of
democracy, comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and
false glitter of fighting, and more of its moral units, as the nation realises
that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty
of war, while the privileged classes reap most of the financial and political
rewards. With the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes
evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs
to the whole race of men; that brotherhood is universal, not insular; that a
question of justice is never settled by fighting; and that war is generally
unmitigated horror and barbarism. The Victorian age is especially marked
because of its rapid progress.
1. Democracy : Amid the multitude of social and political forces of this great age, four
things stem out clearly. First the long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for
personal liberty is definitely settled and democracy becomes the established
order of the day. The king who appeared in an age of popular weakness and
ignorance, and the peers who came with the Normans in triumph are both stripped
of their power and left as figure-heads of a past civilization. The last
vestige of personal government and the divine right of rulers disappears; the
house of commons becomes the ruling power in England; and a series of new
reforms bills rapidly extend the people choose for themselves the men who shall
represent them.
2. Social Unrest : Second because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in 1833 but in the middle of the century England a work to the fact that slaves are not necessarily negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women, and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free this competitive method, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian age until the present day.
3. The ideal of Peace : Third, because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting and more of its moral evils, as the nation realizes that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while the privilege classes reap most of the financial and political rewards. Moreover, with the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men that brother hood is universal, not insular that a question of justice is never settled by fighting and that war is generally unmitigated horror and bar barusm. Tennyson, who came of age when the great reform bill occupied attention, expresses the ideas of the liberals of his day who proposed to spread the gospel of peace. Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the parliament of man the federation of the world.
4. Arts and sciences : Fourth, the Victorian age is especially remarkable because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions. A glance at any record of the industrial achievements of the nineteenth century will show how vast the are and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of the inventions, from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric lights. All these material things, as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry thought as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and machines to determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by long use have become familiar as country roads or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also will have their associations and memories and a poem on the rail roads may be as suggestive as words worth’s sonnet on Westminster bridge and the busy, practical working men who today throng our stress and factories may seem to a future and greater age as quaint and poetical as to us seem the slow toilers of the middle ages.
5. An era of peace : The few colonial wars that broke out during the Victorian approach did not seriously disturb the national life. There was one continental war that directly affected Britain the Crimean war and one that affected her indirectly though strongly the Franco german struggle yet neither of these caused any profound changes. In America the great civil struggle left scars that were soon to be obliterated by the wise statesmanship of her rulers. The whole age may be not unfairly described as one of peaceful activity. In the earlier stages the lessening surges of the French revolution were still felt but by the middle of the century they had almost completely died down, and other hopes and ideals largely specific were gradually taking their place.
6. Material Developments : It was an age alive with new activity. There was a revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great increase of available markets and as a result of this an immense advance in the use of mechanical devices. The new commercial energy was reflected in the great exhibition of 1851. Which was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of prosperity on the other side of this picture of commercial expansion we see the appalling social conditions of the new industrial cities, the squalid slums and the exploitation of cheap labor (often of children), the painful flight by the enlightened few to introduce social legislation and the slow extension of the franchise. The evils of the industrial revolution were vividly painted by such writers as dickens and Mrs. Gaskell and they called forth the missionary efforts of men like Kingsley.
7. Intellectual developments : There can be little doubt that in many cases material wealth produced a hardness of temper and an impatience of projects and ideas that brought no return in hard case yet it is to the credit of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous. There was quite a revolution in scientific thought following upon the works of Darwin and his school, and an immense outburst of social and political throrizing which was represented in this country by the writings of men like Herbert Spencer and john Stuart mill. In addition, popular education became a practical thing. This in its turn produced a new hunger for intellectual food and resulted in a great increase in the production of the press and of other more durable species of literature.
2. Social Unrest : Second because it is an age of democracy, it is an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The slaves had been freed in 1833 but in the middle of the century England a work to the fact that slaves are not necessarily negroes, stolen in Africa to be sold like cattle in the market place, but that multitudes of men, women, and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. To free this competitive method, has been the growing purpose of the Victorian age until the present day.
3. The ideal of Peace : Third, because it is an age of democracy and education, it is an age of comparative peace. England begins to think less of the pomp and false glitter of fighting and more of its moral evils, as the nation realizes that it is the common people who bear the burden and the sorrow and the poverty of war, while the privilege classes reap most of the financial and political rewards. Moreover, with the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it becomes evident that the social equality for which England was contending at home belongs to the whole race of men that brother hood is universal, not insular that a question of justice is never settled by fighting and that war is generally unmitigated horror and bar barusm. Tennyson, who came of age when the great reform bill occupied attention, expresses the ideas of the liberals of his day who proposed to spread the gospel of peace. Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled in the parliament of man the federation of the world.
4. Arts and sciences : Fourth, the Victorian age is especially remarkable because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions. A glance at any record of the industrial achievements of the nineteenth century will show how vast the are and it is unnecessary to repeat here the list of the inventions, from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric lights. All these material things, as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry thought as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and machines to determine accurately their influence upon literature. When these new things shall by long use have become familiar as country roads or have been replaced by newer and better things, then they also will have their associations and memories and a poem on the rail roads may be as suggestive as words worth’s sonnet on Westminster bridge and the busy, practical working men who today throng our stress and factories may seem to a future and greater age as quaint and poetical as to us seem the slow toilers of the middle ages.
5. An era of peace : The few colonial wars that broke out during the Victorian approach did not seriously disturb the national life. There was one continental war that directly affected Britain the Crimean war and one that affected her indirectly though strongly the Franco german struggle yet neither of these caused any profound changes. In America the great civil struggle left scars that were soon to be obliterated by the wise statesmanship of her rulers. The whole age may be not unfairly described as one of peaceful activity. In the earlier stages the lessening surges of the French revolution were still felt but by the middle of the century they had almost completely died down, and other hopes and ideals largely specific were gradually taking their place.
6. Material Developments : It was an age alive with new activity. There was a revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great increase of available markets and as a result of this an immense advance in the use of mechanical devices. The new commercial energy was reflected in the great exhibition of 1851. Which was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of prosperity on the other side of this picture of commercial expansion we see the appalling social conditions of the new industrial cities, the squalid slums and the exploitation of cheap labor (often of children), the painful flight by the enlightened few to introduce social legislation and the slow extension of the franchise. The evils of the industrial revolution were vividly painted by such writers as dickens and Mrs. Gaskell and they called forth the missionary efforts of men like Kingsley.
7. Intellectual developments : There can be little doubt that in many cases material wealth produced a hardness of temper and an impatience of projects and ideas that brought no return in hard case yet it is to the credit of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous. There was quite a revolution in scientific thought following upon the works of Darwin and his school, and an immense outburst of social and political throrizing which was represented in this country by the writings of men like Herbert Spencer and john Stuart mill. In addition, popular education became a practical thing. This in its turn produced a new hunger for intellectual food and resulted in a great increase in the production of the press and of other more durable species of literature.
Literary features of the age:
The sixty years commonly included under the name of the Victorian age present many dissimilar features. Yet in several respects we can safely generalize.
1. Its morality : Nearly all observers of the Victorian age are struck by its extreme deference to the conventions. To a later age these seem ludicrous. It was thought indecorous for a man to smoke in public and for a lady to ride a bicycle. To a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the grossness of the earlier regency, and the influence of the Victorian court was all in its favor. In literature it is amply reflected. Tennyson is the most conspicuous co placement sir Galahad and King Arthur, dickens, perhaps the most representative of the Victorian novelists took for his model the old picaresque novel. But it is almost laughable to observe his anxiety to be ‘moral’. This type of writing is quite blameless but it produced the king of public that denounced the innocuous jane eyre as wicked because it dealt with the harmless affection of a girl for a married man.
2. The Revolt : Many writers protest against the deadening effect of the conventions. Carlyle and Matthew Arnold in their different accents were loud in their denunciations thackerary never tired of satirizing the snobbishness of the age and bowing’s cobbly mannerisms were an indirect challenge to the velvety diction and the smooth self satisfaction of the Tennysonian School. As the age proceeded the reaction
strengthened. In poetry the Pre-Raphaelites, by Swinburne and William Morris proclaimed no morality but that of the crtist’s regard for his art. By the vigour of his method Swinburne horrified the timorous and made himself rather ridiculous in the eyes of sensible people. It remained for Thomas hardy to pull a side. The Victorian veils and shutters and with the large tolerances of the master to regards men’s actions
with open gaze.
2. Intellectual developments : The literary product was inevitably affected by the new ideas in science, religion and politics. On the origin of species (1859) of Darwin shook to its foundation scientific thought. We can perceive the influence of such a work in Tennyson’s. in memoriam in Matthew Arnold’s meditative poetry and in the works of Carlyle. In religious and ethical thought the Oxford movement as it was called was the most note warthy advance. This movement had its source among the young and eager thinkers of the old university and was headed by the great Newman who ultimately (1854) joined the church of Rome, as a religious portent it marked the widespread discontent with the existing belief of the church of England as a literary influence it affected many writers of note, including Newman himself, roude, Maurice kingsley and glad stone.
3. The new education : The new education acts, making a cetian measure of education compulsory, rapidly produced and enormous reading public. The cheapening of printing and paper increased the demand for books so that the production was multiplied. The most popular form of literature was the novel and the novelists responded with a will. Much of their work was of a high standard so much so that it has been asserted by competent critics that the middle years of the nineteenth century were the richest in the whole history of the novel.
4. International influences : During the nineteenth century the interaction among American and European writers was remarkably fresh and strong. In Britain the influences of the great german writers was continuous and it was championed by Carlyle and Mathew Arnold. Subject nations in particular the Italians, were a sympathetic theme for prose and verse. The browning Swinburne, morris and Meredith were deeply absorbed in the long struggle of the followers of garibaldi and Cavour and when Italian freedom was gained the rejoicings were genuine.
5. The achievement of the age : With all its immense production, the age produced no supreme writer. It revealed no Shakespeare no Shelley nor a Byron or a Scott. The general literary level was however very high and it was an age moreover of spacious intellectual horizons, noble endeavor and bright aspirations.
Poets
1) Arthur Hugh
Clough (01 Jan
1819-13 Nov 1861) was an English poet, an educationist and the devoted
assistant to ground breaking nurse Florence Nightingale. Matthew Arnold, four
years his junior, arrived the term after Clough had graduated. Clough and
Arnold enjoyed an intense friendship in Oxford. Ambarvalia (1849) published jointly with his friend
Thomas Burbidge, contains shorter poems of various dates from circa 1840
onwards. A few lyric and elegiac pieces, later in date than the Ambarvalia,
complete Clough’s poetic output. His long poems have a certain narrative and
psychological penetration and some of his lyrics have strength of melody to
match their depth of thought. He has been regarded as one of the most
forward-looking English poets of the nineteenth century. He often went against
the popular religious and social ideals of his day, and his verse is said to
have the melancholy and the perplexity of an age of transition, although
Through a Glass Darkly suggests that he
did not lack certain religious beliefs of his own. His work is interesting to
students of meter, owing to the experiments which he made in the Bothic, and
elsewhere, with English hexameters. Clough is best known for his short poems
Say Not the Struggle Naught Avaleith , a rousing call to tired soldiers to keep
up the good fight, Through a Glass Darkly , an exploration of religious doubt,
and The Latest Decalogue , a satirical take on the Ten Commandants.
2) Robert Browning (07 May 1812-12 December
1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse,
especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.
It was an obscure early poemPauline that
brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, followed by Paracelsus
praised by William Wordsworth and Dickens. By the time of his wife’s death
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning) in 1861, his stock was
beginning to rise, with a major collection men and Women , followed by the long- blank verse poem The ring and
and the book. He is better known today for his shorter poems such as The Pied
Piper of Hamelin and How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. By
Twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no
publisher could be found. He was a great admirer of the Romantic poets,
especially Shelley. In March 1833, pauline , a fragment of a confession was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley
at the expense of the author. It is a long poem composed in homage to Shelley
and somewhat in his style. In 1834, began writing Paracelsus , which was
published in 1835. The subject of The sixteenth Century Savant and Alchemist was probably
suggested to him by the Lomte Amedee de Ripart Mondar, to whom it was
dedicated. It is a mono drama without action, dealing with the
problems confronting an intellectual trying to find his role in society. In
1838, he visited Italy, looking for background for Sordello , a long poem in
heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard
spoken of by Dante in the Divine comedy. Canto 6 of Purgatory . This was published in 1840 and met with widespread
division, gaining him the reputation of Wanton carelessness and obscurity. The
Ring and the Book was the poet’s most ambitious project and arguably his greatest
work; it has been praised as a Tour de Force of dramatic poetry, published
separately in four volumes from November 1868 throughout February 1869, the
poem was a success both commercially and critically and finally brought
Browning the renown he had sought for nearly forty years.
3) Elizabeth
Barrett Browning (06 March 1806-29 June 1861)
was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry
was widely popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime.
Her first adult collection, The Seraphin and Other Poems was published in 1838. She wrote prolifically between
1841-1844 producing poetry. Elizabeth’s volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this
time, she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her
work. She is remembered for poems like How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh(1856) . She wrote her own Homeric Epic The Battele of
marathon: A Poem. . Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with
other poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and
Greek politics.
4) Matthew
Arnold (24 December 1822-15 April 1888) was an English poet
and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Arnold published his
second volume of poems in 1852, Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. In 1853, he published poems: A New Edition , a selection
from two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, Sohrab and Rutum and The Scholar Gipsy . In 1854, Poems: Second Series appeared; also a
selection, it is included the new poem, Balder Dead. Arnold is sometimes called
the Third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert
Browning. Arnold was keenly aware of his place in poetry. In 1869, he wrote a
letter to his mother:
“My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last
quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people
become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested
in the literary productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I
have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and
abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two
than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main
line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had
theirs”.
Harold Bloom echoes Arnold’s self-characterization in
his introduction to the Modern Critical Views volume on Arnold:
“Arnold got into his poetry what Tennyson and Browning scarcely needed, the
main march of mind of his time”.
Of his poetry, Bloom says:
“Whatever his achievement as a critic of Literature, society or religion,
his work as a poet may not merit the reputation it has continued to hold in the
twentieth century. Arnold is at his best, a very good but highly derivative
poet… As with Tennyson, Hopkins and Rossetti, Arnold’s dominant precursor was
Keats, but this is an unhappy puzzle, since Arnold (unlike the others)
professed not to admire Keats greatly, while writing his own elegiac poem in a
diction, meter, imagistic procedure, that are embarrassingly close to Keats”.
In 1867, Dover Beach depicted a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have
receded. In his poetry, he derived not only the subject matter of his narrative
poems from various traditional or literary sources but even much of the
romantic melancholy of his earlier poems Senancour’s Obermann.
5) Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828- 09 April 1882)
was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the
Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848, with William Holman Hunt and john Everett
Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of
artists an writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and
Edward Burne- Jones. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later
poetry was characterized by the complex interlinking of thought
and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures,
spanning from The Girlhood of mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte
Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Gobline
Market by the
celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister. He worked on English
translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Naova.
6) William
Morris (24 March 1834- 03 October 1896) was an English
textile designer, poet, novelist, translator and social activist. He achieved
success with the publication of his epic poems and novels namely The Earthly
paradise (1868-70) . His first poems were published when he was 24 years
old. His first volume,The Defence of Guenevere and other poems (1858) was the first
book of Pre- Raphaelite poetry to be published. The Haystack in the Floods, one
of the poems in those collections is probably now one of his better known
poems. One early minor poem was Masters in his Hall 91860) , a Christmas Carol
written to an old French tune. Another Christmas theme poem is The Snoe in the
Street adapted from the Land East of the sun and West of the Moon in The
Earthly Paradise.
7) Algernon
Charles Swinburne was one of the
most accomplished lyric poets of this age and was a prominent symbol of
rebellion against the conservative values of his time. Later works are By the
North Sea, Evening on the Broads, A Nympholept, The Lake of Gaube, and Neap
Tide.. Other works are Poems and Ballads, Moxon (1866), Songs before Sunrise,
Song of Two Nations.
Works Cited
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-salient-features-victorian-age-english-126463
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