History of British Literature
19th Century Literature
Three Periods
Romanticism (1790-1830)
Victorianism (1830-1890)
Decadence (1890s)
Our Discussion
 Historical Background
 Literary Feature
 Literary Device
The Return To Nature (1890-1830)
Historical Background
The European War
Extinction of French republic
The rise and destruction of the power of
Napoleon
The restoration of Bourbon Dynasty
Reaction
Social Conditions
Misery
Low wages
Unemployment
Literary Features
Abundant Output
Great Range of Subject
Treatment to Nature
Political and periodical writing
The influence of Germany
American Literature
Literary Devices : Poetry
William Wordsworth
its inequality and limitation
Its egoism
Lyrical gift
Treatment to Nature
Heroic couplet
Example:
My Heart Leaps Up
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when life began;
So it is now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my day to be
Bound each to each by natural piety
The Series of Lucy Poems
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)
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Imaginative power
Witchery of language
Simplicity of diction
Epitaph
The Ancient Mariner : The song the
Sirens Sang
And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased: yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of tune,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Epitaph
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur
O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that
good man be? By the side of a spring, on
the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs
of a young birch tree. The oak that in
summer was sweet to hear. And rustled
its leaves in the fall of the year,
Frost at Midnight
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
Lord Byron
Lyrical gift
Satirical power
Style of Pope
His reputation
ottava rima
Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings
more ample;
But Virgil's songs are pure, except that
horrid one
Beginning with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Lyrical power
Choice of subject
(the one consisting of his visionary, prophetic
works such as Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude,
The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound,
and similar poems, and the other of his
shorter lyric)
Descriptive power
Simplicity
The Sensitive plant
For Winter came; the wind was his whip;
One choppy finger was on his lip;
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles
The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
With stems like serpents interlaced.
John Keats
Death, beauty in art and Nature.
Ex: Bright stars, the most beautiful English
sonets, Hyperion, his best work
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad "mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Hyperion
Literary Device: Novels
Sir Walter Scott
Rapidity of Production
Historical Novel, domestic Novel, Fresh
fiction
His Shakespearian Qualities
Hits Style : lacks suppleness, but it is
powerful, solid, and sure, employ
Scottish dialect
Fergus, as the presiding judge was putting on the fatal
cap of judgment, placed his own bonnet upon his
head, regarded him with a steadfast and stern look,
and replied in a firm voice: " I cannot let this numerous
audience suppose that to such an appeal I have no
answer to make. But what I have to say you would
not bear to hear, for my defence would be your
condemnation. Proceed, then, in the name of God, to
do what is permitted to you. Yesterday and the day
before you have condemned loyal and honourable
blood to be poured forth like water. Spare not mine.
Were that of all my ancestors in my veins, I would
have perilled it in this quarrel." He resumed
his seat, and refused again to rise.
Evan Maccombich looked at him with great
earnestness, and, rising up, seemed anxious to
speak; but the confusion of the court and the
perplexity arising from thinking in a language,
different from that in which he was to express
himself, kept him silent. There was a murmur of
compassion among the spectators, from the idea
that the poor fellow intended to plead the
influence of his superior as an excuse for his
crime.
The judge commanded silence, and encouraged Evan to
proceed.
"I was only ganging to say, my lord," said Evan, in what
he meant to be an insinuating manner, "that if your
excellent Honour and the honourable court would let
Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once, and let him gae
back to France, and no to trouble King George's
government again, that ony six o' the very best of his
clan will be willing to be justified in his stead; and if
you'll just let me gae down to Glennaquoich.I'll fetch
them up to ye mysell, to head or hang, and you may
begin wi me the very first man."
Waverley
Jane Austen
Unromantic plots
Ordinary characters but convincingly
alive
Place in history of fiction
Austen’ Works
Pride and Prejudice (1796-97), published
1813).
Sense and Sensibility (1797-98, published
1811)
Northanger Abbey (1798, published
posthumously 1818).
Mansfield Park (1811-13, published 1814),
Emma (1815, published 1816)
Persuasion (1815-16, published 1818).
Other Novelists
Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849)
Her works fall into three classes,
short stories for children, such as Simple Susan, which
were collected in The Parent's Assistant (1795-1800) and
Early Lessons (1801-15); Irish tales, which include her best
works, Castle Rackrent (1800), The Absentee (1809), and
Ormond (1817); and fulllength novels, such as Belinda
(180)), Leonora (1806), Patronage (1814), and
Harrington (1817)
Michael Scott (1789-1835) - the sea
Novelist
Washington Irving (1783-1859) -the
first American novelist to establish
a European reputation.
-His works : History of New York
(1809), The Sketch-book (1820)- a
collection of short tales and
sketches, Tales of a Traveller (1824),
Legends of the Alhambra (1832),
MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
• Charles Lamb
-Essays of Elia (1823)
- The Last Essays of Elia (1833)
- Confessions of an English Opium
Eater (1821), appeared in The London
Magazine
• William Hazlitt (the lectures and essays
on literary and general subjects)
His lectures on Characters of Shakespeare' s
Plays (1817), The English Poets (1818), The
English Comic Writers (1819), and The Dramatic
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820).
His best essays were collected in The Round
Table (1817), Table Talk; or, Original Essays on
Men and Manners (1821-22), and The Spirit of
the Age; or, Contemporary Portraits (1825)
What can you conclude?
Can you answer these
following questions?
o What are the features of
literature in romanticism
period?
o Mention two important
poets?
o What kind of novels
popular in this period?
o What are the
miscellaneous prose ever
produced in this period?