Possible questions about 19th century American and British Literature
1. More or less, what period do we refer to when we talk about Victorian Literature?
2. What are the Literary and Artistic movements we can identify in the 19th century American
and British Literature?
3. What is the literary genre which characterized the 19th century American and British
Literature? And what were its evolutions in the years?
4. What were the reasons why “novel” became such a popular literary genre in the 19 th
century?
5. How did 19th century novelists publish their works, especially when they were long novels?
6. What kind of narrators and what kind of language do we usually find in 19th century novels?
7. During the Victorian Age women were the majority of the readers. Is this statement true or
false?
8. During the Victorian Age novelists were just men. Is this statement true or false?
9. Make a comparison between Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
10. When we say that W.M. Thackeray was the novelist of the upper middle class of the 19th
century are we correct? Give reasons for your answers.
11. Can you name some of the most important works by Dickens and what information can we
get from their titles?
12. Did Dickens’s life have an influence in his works?
13. How did Dickens influence the English language? Give some examples?
14. Besides giving quite real descriptions of the society of his time, Dickens filled his works
with sentimentalism and melodrama and provided most of them with a happy ending for the
main character/s. Why did he do that?
15. Dickens’s works are often defined sentimental-realistic and grotesque-humorous; the two
couples of adjectives are usually associated with the two main types of characters in his
stories. Can you tell me who they are?
16. What was the “second” job of most American and British writers and did it influenced their
writings?
17. What is the most important novel by William Makepeace Thackeray? What is its plot? How
was it welcomed by the members of the society it talks about?
18. We often define Rudyard Kipling a children’s stories’ writer. Is the statement correct? Give
reasons.
19. What part of Britain can we know when we read Kipling’s novels?
20. What was Kipling’s attitude towards the British Empire?
21. Besides Kipling, other British and American authors wrote novels which are usually
considered for children. Can you name them? Can you say what is the second reading
level/meaning of their works?
22. Who started the detective genre and who were his followers?
23. Talk about the theme of the “double” in Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry
James and Joseph Conrad’s works and say what works you have to refer to accomplish your
task.
24. Tell about the evolution of the theme of dualism in Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Henry James and Joseph Conrad’s works and tell about the very beginning of the
horror fiction genre.
25. In the background of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” there is the Imperialism. What
was Conrad’s attitude towards it?
26. “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad is often compared to “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner” by Coleridge. Can you tell differences and similarities between the two works?
27. Can you find any similarities between Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and “Heart of
Darkness” by Joseph Conrad?
28. Why is Henry James considered a pioneer of the modern psychological novel?
29. What is Henry James’s technique as concerns the narrator and point of views in his stories?
30. How was Henry James able to deliver his stories to the readers without giving them a
definitive or final interpretation? What feelings was that strategy able to arise in the readers?
31. What was the new form of literary writing Henry James used and why did he make that
choice?
32. How much important were the stories in Henry James’s works compared with his
characters’ psychological analysis?
33. What are the two dominant themes in Henry James?
34. What are the imageries writers like Poe, Stevenson, James, Wilde and Conrad use to make
the readers build particular images in their minds?
35. Can you tell me the story of “The black cat” and something about its author?
36. Tell me the plot of “The turn or the screw” and something about its author.
37. Tell me the story of “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, the information you get from the title and
something about its author.
38. What are the reflections you can make on the limits of science if you think about
“Frankenstein” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde”
39. What is the suggested but never openly spoken theme in “The turn of the screw”? Was the
theme new for the time?
40. What is Transcendentalism? Where did it spread and who were the main exponents?
41. What kind of works writers like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wrote?
42. Who is the writer who in his most important work summed up Realism, Naturalism,
Impressionism and Symbolism movements and techniques. What is the title of that work?
43. What is the difference between Realism and Naturalism? Where and how did Naturalism
start?
44. What is the Aesthetic Movement principle and how did it evolve in Decadentism?
45. Talk about Walt Whitman, his poetry, his innovation in poetry and the themes of his poems.
46. Love and respect of Nature we find in Transcendentalist poets and Whitman have their roots
only in the European Romantic movement?
47. What are the themes we find in Emily Dickinson’s lyrics? What kind of verse did she use?
What are the aspects which make her close to Hermetic poets?
48. What was the contribution of Black Americans to the American culture in the 19th century?