Victorian Age (1830-90)
Historical Background
The era of peace
Material Developments
Intellectual Developments
Literature Features
Its Morality
The revolt
Intellectual Development
The New Education
International Influences
The achievement of the Age
Literary Devices
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Poetry
His Choice of Subject
His craftsmanship
His pictorial Quality
Tennyson's lyrical quality
heavy with imagery
Historical Plays
Quegn Mary (1875), Harold (1876). and Becket
(1884)
Break, break, break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Seal
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play !
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still I
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Seal But the tender grace of a
day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Robert Browning : Literary
Features
Choice of subjects (philosophical or
religious, love, and lighter themes)
Style
bewildering mental acrobatics, harsh
rhythm and vocabulary , noble dignity,
verbal music as good as anything
produced by that master of melody.
Descriptive power
His works
Paracelsus (1835), blank verse, charming lyrics
Thus the Mayne glideth
Where my love abideth.
Sleep's no softer: it proceeds
On through lawns, on through meads
On and on, whate'er befall,
Meandering and musical,
Though the niggard pasturage
Bears not on its shaven ledge
Aught but weeds and waving grasses
To view the river as it passes,
Save here and there a scanty patch
Of primroses too faint to catch
A weary bee.
The play Strafford (1837), story of the
hero, a Mantuan troubadour, is
cumbered with a mass of detailed
historical allusion, and the style, in spite
of occasional passages of descriptive
beauty, is too compressed.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)
Men and Women (1855)
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
• Leaves of Grass (1855) –collection of
twelve poems
• Drum Taps (1866),
Novelists
Charles Dickens
Features in his novels
Their popularity (hasty and ill-considered work,
crudity of plot, unreality of characters,
looseness of style, the pernicious habit of
issuing the stories in parts/ strong a-temptation,
rich and enduring.
His interest in social reform
His Imagination
His humor and Pathos
Mannerism
His works
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The Pickwick Papers (1836)
Oliver Twist (1837)
American Notes (1842)
Martin Chuzzle- wit (1843)
Bleak House (1852) and Hard Times (1854) were
written for his
• Household Words; Little Dorrit (1855) appeared
in monthly parts
• A Tale of Two Cities(1859), Great Expectations
(1860) were for All the Year Round
• Our Mutual Friend (1864)
WILLIAM MAKEPE ACE THACKERAY
• Their reputation
• His Method (the characters are rogues
and most of his virtuous folk are fools)
• Humour and pathos (satire and
sarcasm)
• His style (effortless, flexible to an
extraordinary degree)
His works
• The Yellowplush Correspondence (183738)
• The Book of Snobs (1849)
• Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844)
• Fair (1847-48)
• The History of Pendennis (1848-50)
The Brontes
Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), and
Anne (1820-49)
Charlotte - Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849)
Emily- Wuthering Heights (1847)
Anne Bronte- Agnes Grey (1847) and The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Place in History
• The pioneers in fiction of that aspect of
the romantic movement which
concerned itself with the baring of the
human soul.
• Painted the sufferings of an individual
personality, and presented a new
conception of the heroine as a woman
of vital strength and passionate feelings
Other Novelists
George Elliot-Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on
the Flos (1860)-the partly autobiographical
story of Maggie and Torn Tulliver, Romola
(1863).
Sense of the tragedy of life, Low classes of
society
concern with the problems of the human
personality and its relationship with forces
outside itself, her interest in detailed
psychological analysis of the realms of the
inner consciousness
MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)-American Men
of letters-periodical literatureWalter Horatio Pater (1839-94)-Studies in the
History of the Renaissance (essay), Imaginary
Portraits, Appreciations.
The historians-Alexander William Kinglake
(1809-91), John Richard Green (1837-83)Short history of English people
The scientists- Charles Robert Darwin, Thomas
Henry Huxley