Victorian Age
LITERATURE
The Victorian Age
The novel
• There was a communion of interests and
opinions between the writers and their
readers.
• The Victorians were avid consumers of
literature. They borrowed books from
circulating libraries and read various
periodicals.
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The Victorian Age
The novel was the best way to convey a
picture of life lived in a given society
and to question it.
• Novels made their first appearance in
instalments on the pages of periodicals.
• The voice of the omniscient narrator
provided a comment on the plot and
erected a rigid barrier between
«right» and «wrong», light and darkness.
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The Victorian Age
• The setting chosen by most Victorian
novelists was the town.
• It was realistic
• Victorian writers concentrated on the
creation of characters and achieved a
deeper analysis of their inner life.
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Victorian Novel
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Novels of manners
William Tackeray
Humanitarian novels
Charles Dickens
Social problem novel
Elisabeth Gaskel
Fantastic novels still linked to Romantic and
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Nonsense
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Gothic tradition
Adventure novels
Bildungsroman
Exotic Novels
Crime Novel
Bronte sisters
Lewis Carrol
R. Louis Stevenson
Rudyard Kipling
Oscar Wilde
Conan Doyle
Victorian Literature is often
divided into 3 stages:
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Early -Victorians
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Mid-Victorians 1860- 1880
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Late-Victorians : last 20 years of
Victorian Age and Edwardian Age
Early Victorian writers
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The Novelists identify themselves with
their age
they felt to have a moral and social
responsibility
They analysed their society paying
attention not to offend the moral code
of the period
Their purpose was didactic : they saw
in the novel a way to correct the vices
and weakness of the age.
Novels’ main characteristics:
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Published in instalments they were cheaper
and also read by the lower classes
episodic structure
excessive length
obliged to maintain the interest so the reader
went on buying the periodicals
too many details, coincidence and incidents as
the writer could modify the story according to
the necessity and success
the development of SENSATIONAL to catch the
attention, to create suspense and expectation
Wilkie Collins
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Make them laugh
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Make them cry
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Make them wait
keep in mind that the
readers were mainly from
the middle class and they
wanted to read just to
entertain themselves and
their family
Mid-Victorian
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the Bronte sisters
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans )
Elisabeth Gaskel
Late-Victorian or
Anti-Victorian Reaction
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the sense of dissatisfaction and rebellion
prevailed
a new sort of realism which rejected any
sentimental and romantic attitude; it focused
on the clash between man and environment,
his dreams and their fulfilment, illusion and
reality
the writers were critical and attacked the
superficial optimism and self confidence of the
age , a more pessimistic view
THE CHARACTERS
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The Individuals are increasingly portrayed
as alienated from the world in which they
live and powerless to alter their destiny
The characters’ interior world, their
dreams, illusions and despair, becomes
more important than the alienating and
mechanical external reality
Anti-Victorian Reaction
literary movements
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Realism: reproduction of the reality
without idealizing it ( as the
Romantics did)
Naturalism: total objectivity and
scientific approach to Literature
Aestheticism: Art for Art’s sake
Decadentism: Art is superior to
nature, the finest beauty is that of
dying and decaying things
Realistic Novel
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Different from the mild realism of the
first phase
In France Honore de Balzac, Stendhal
who analysed the human beings in their
psychological and moral complexity
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Naturalistic novels
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It started from POSITIVISM , in
France, with its faith in reason
and science
Zolà describes the Urban setting
in a scientific way
Naturalism:Thomas Hardy
George Eliot Mary Anne Evans
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Theories of Darwin
Man conditioned by heredity,environment,
circumstances
Deprived of his free will
At the mercy of an indifferent fate
No longer responsible for his actions because
these were conditioned by forces beyond his
control
to be realistic they focused on the worst aspects
of life
The writer had to be objective as a scientist
Italy
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Verismo developed with Verga
and his pessimistic view,
describing the world of peasants.
Like Thomas Hardy , he thought
that it wasn’t possible to change
the destiny of people, there is no
social function in art, literature
couldn’t change the reality but
only to reproduce it.
Aesthetic movement and
Decadentism
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England : Oscar Wilde
France: Balzac with
“ Les Flour du Mal”
Italy : D’Annunzio and Pascoli