THE VICTORIAN AGE1830-90

BACKGROUND AND FEATURES OF THE AGE: An era of Peace Conflict between science and religion Material Development Intellectual Development Morality The Revolt The New Education International Influences The Achievement of the Age

MAJOR WRITERS OF THE AGE: Tennyson Robert Browning Elizabeth Barrett

Browning Matthew Arnold Dante Gabriel Rossetti Christina Georgina

Rossetti William Morris Algernon Charles

Swinburne Charles Dickens William Makepeace

Thackeray The Brontes George Eliot George Meredith Thomas Carlyle Macaulay John Ruskin Thomas Hardy

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT:  19th-century movement Basically a religious movement Outcome of a long controversy and ideological

conflicts amongst different Christian Sects and Churches.

It was centered at the University of Oxford that sought a renewal of “catholic,” or Roman Catholic, thought and practice within the Church of England in opposition to the Protestant tendencies of the church.

It was carried on through tracts and pamphlets, also called The Tractarian Movement

Leaders were poets and prose writers It appeared to be a theological dispute among the

local clergy in a university city

The aim of the Movement was to rehabilitate the dignity of the church, to defend the church against the interference of the State, to fight against liberalism, to defend religion against the onslaught of scientific discoveries, and to preserve faith against rationalism.

The origin of the Oxford Movement can be traced to the opposition of the scientific discoveries against age-old religious beliefs and faith.

Darwin’s Origin of Species shook the very foundations of religion. Religion has to be saved because man cannot live without faith in some Higher Power.

John Henry Newman, the most important of all leaders originator of the Movement was John Keble

Sampson says, “The chief aim of the Oxford Movement was to make plain to the Englishmen the historical continuity of the national Church. This was the spirit of the Oxford Movement. The real teaching of the Church would be found if you went back to the right sources.”

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SCHOOL OF POETRY: Three English painters named Dante Gabriel

Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt founded a society in 1848 and called it Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They gave this name to their society because they drew their inspiration from the Italian painters before Raphael.

They found ‘a sweetness, depth and sincerity of devotional feeling, a self-forgetfulness and humble adherence to truth, which were absent from the sophisticated art of Raphael and his successors.”

D. G. Rossetti and some of his friends were poets, too. They tried to give ‘painting effect’ to their poetry. This give rise to a like society which came to be known as the Pre-Raphaelite School of Poetry.

Subject matter for their poetry was romance and mysticism of the Middle Ages

Poetry- painted pictures These poets created pure art, known as ‘art for art’s

sake’ only No ulterior social or moral teaching Pictorial poetry- picturesque poems They didn’t believe in ‘art for life’s sake’ Musical A charge of voluptuousness is often brought against

the poetry of this School. Robert Buchanan called the Pre-Raphaelite poetry ‘Fleshy School of Poetry.’

He so called it because it is too sensuous and often degenerates to the level of sensuality and voluptuousness in their description of feminine beauty.

TENNYSON, ALFRED TENNYSON

The Princess (1847) In Memoriam (1850) Maud and Other Poems (1855) Enoch Arden (1864) Idylls of the King Akbar’s Tomb Crossing the Bar Locksley Hall Sixty Years after Dora Poem by my two brothers Poems Chiefly Lyrical Ulysses The Lotos-Eater The Death of Oenone and Other Poems- 1892

PLAYS: Historical plays Queen Mary- 1875 Harold - 1876 Backet – 1884 The Falcon – 1879, is a comedy based on a story

from Boccaccio The Cup – 1881, is based on a story from Plutarch The Foresters – 1892, dealing with the familiar

Robin Hood theme, was produced in America.

IN MEMORIAM: Completed in 1849 Written in the memory of Arthur Hallam  Its meditation on the search for hope after great

loss touches upon many of the most important and deeply-felt concerns of Victorian society. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.

"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas.

The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue)

I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all This stanza is to be found in Canto 27. The last

two lines are usually taken as offering a meditation on the dissolution of a romantic relationship. However the lines originally referred to the death of the poet's beloved friend

Crossing the Bar: 1889 The last poem His own elegy The Princess: A serio-comic attempt to handle the theme that

was then known as ‘the new woman.’ For the sake of his story Tennyson imagines a ladies’ academy with a mutinously intellectual princess at the head of it. For a space a tragedy seems imminent, but in the end all is well, for the Princess is married to the blameless hero. The poem is in blank verse.

ROBERT BROWNING: Pauline Paracelsus Strafford Sordello Bells and Pomegranates Christmas Eve and

Easter Day Men and Women Dramatis Personae The Ring and the Book Asolando Pippa Passes

Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea del Sarto King Victor and King

Charles Dramatic Lyrics Dramatic Romances and

Lyrics Pippa Passes (1841)

Pauline (1833), an introspective poem, which shows very strongly the influence of Shelley.

Paracelsus (1835), the story of the hero’s unquenchable thirst for that breadth of knowledge which is beyond the grasp of one man, brings to the fore Browning’s predominant ideas- that a life without love must be a failure, and that God is working all things to an end beyond human divining.

Strafford (1837), produced by the actor Macready achieved real pathos towards the close.

Sordello (1840) an attempt to decide the relationship between art and life, is Browning’s most obscure work.

Men and Women is his first published work.

The Ring and the Book The poem is composed of twelve books,

essentially ten lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by the various characters in the story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Long, even by Browning's own standards (over twenty thousand lines), 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.

Four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869

The year’s at the spring,And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;The snail’s on the thorn;God’s in His heaven—

All’s right with the world!

DRAMATIC MONLOGUE: The meaning in a Browning dramatic monologue is not

what the speaker directly reveals but what he inadvertently "gives away" about himself in the process of rationalising past actions, or "special-pleading" his case to a silent auditor in the poem.

A single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment […].

This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors' presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.

The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's temperament and character.

Ulysses:  … Come, my friends,

     'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.     Push off, and sitting well in order smite     The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds     To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths     Of all the western stars, until I die.     It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;     It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,     And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Dover Beach:The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; —on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in.

My Last Duchess: That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

... She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate’erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: 1806-61 An Essay on Mind; with Other Poems

(1826), her first published work. After a pause of nine years Prometheus

Bound (1833) appeared. The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838) Sonnets from the Portuguese (1847) Casa Guidi Windows (1851) Aurora Leigh (1857) Last Poems (1862) The Cry of the Children (1841)

MATHEW ARNOLD:The Strayed Reveller and Other

Poems (1849)'The Forsaken Merman' 'The Sick King in Bokhara'

Empedocles on Etna and other Poems (1852)"The Buried Life" "Empedocles on Etna" Lines in Kensington gardens" (1852) 'Tristram and Iseult' —"Summer Night”

Poems (1853)Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems "Calais Sands" "Sohrab and Rustum" "The Scholar-Gipsy" commentaries: "Church of Brou""Requiescat""Memorial Verses of Wordsworth""Stanzas in Memory of the Author of

Obermann"

Poems, Second Series (1855)"Balder Dead"

New Poems (1867) "Dover Beach"  "Thyrsis" —  "Rugby Chapel" "Heine's Grave" "A Southern Night“ Prose Work: Essay in Criticism (1865 and 1889), a critical work Culture and Anarchy (1869) Literature and Dogma (1873)

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI:1828-82Painter and poetThe eldest of pre-

Raphaelite school of poetry

Poems (1870)Ballads and Sonnets

(1881)The Blessed Damozel

The blessed damozel leaned outFrom the gold bar of Heaven;Her eyes were deeper than the depthOf waters stilled at even;She had three lilies in her hand,And the stars in her hair were seven.

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI: Goblin Market and other Poems (1864) The Prince’s Progress and other poems (1866) A Pageant and other poems (1881) Verses (1893) New Poems (1896)

WILLIAM MORRIS: 1834-96 The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems

(1858) shows his love of beauty of colour, sound, and scenery, and his passion for medieval. (the first book of Pre-Raphaelite poetry to be published.)

The Life and Death of Jason (1867), a heroic poem The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), a collection of

tales, some classical, some medieval The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of

the Niblungs (1877), a ling narrative poem, based on the Norse sagas.

Poems by the Way (1891)

Prose Romances: A Tale of the House of the Wolfings (1889) The Roots of the Mountains (1890) The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891) The Sundering Flood (1898)

The best of his lectures are to be found in: Hopes and Fears for Art (1882) Signs of Change (1888) A Dream of Joan Ball (1888) News from Nowhere (1891)

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 1837-1909 Verse drama The Queen Mother (1860) Rosamond (1860) Chastelard (1865) Bothwell (1874) Mary Stuart (1881) Marino Faliero (1885) Locrine (1887) The Sisters (1892) Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899)

Poetry Atalanta in Calydon (1865) — [although a tragedy, traditionally

included with "Poetry"] Poems and Ballads (1866) Songs Before Sunrise (1871) Songs of Two Nations (1875) Erecthus (1876) — [although a tragedy, traditionally included with

"Poetry"] Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878) Songs of the Springtides (1880) Studies in Song (1880) The Heptalogia, or the Seven against Sense. A Cap with Seven

Bells (1880) Tristam of Lyonesse (1882) A Century of Roundels (1883) A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems (1884) Poems and Ballads, Third Series (1889) Astrophel and Other Poems (1894) The Tale of Balen (1896) A Channel Passage and Other Poems (1904)

Criticism William Blake: A Critical Essay (1868, new edition

1906) Under the Microscope (1872) George Chapman: A Critical Essay (1875) Essays and Studies (1875) A Note on Charlotte Brontë (1877) A Study of Shakespeare (1880) A Study of Victor Hugo (1886) A Study of Ben Johnson (1889) Studies in Prose and Poetry (1894) The Age of Shakespeare (1908) Shakespeare (1909)

Major collections The poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 6 vols.

London: Chatto & Windus, 1904. The Tragedies of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 5 vols.

London: Chatto & Windus, 1905. The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne,

ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise, 20 vols. Bonchurch Edition; London and New York: William Heinemann and Gabriel Wells, 1925-7.

The Swinburne Letters, ed. Cecil Y. Lang, 6 vols. 1959-62.

CHARLES DICKENS: 1812-70 Sketches by Boz (1836), a series of dealing with

London life The Pickwick Papers (1836) Oliver Twist (1837) appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany Nicholas Nickleby (1838) The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) Barnaby Rudge (1841), historical novel American Notes (1842) Martin Chuzzlewit (1843) A Christmas Carol (1843) Dombey and Son (1846) David Copperfield () Bleak House (1852) Hard Times (1854)

Little Dorrit (1855) A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Great Expectations (1860) Our Mutual Friend (1864)

THE PICKWICK PAPERS:

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club  The first novel by Charles Dickens Written for the publication as serial Majority of the characters are male or that most

of the women are treated unsympathetically The masculinity of the novel rests mainly in the

finesse and accuracy of Dickens' portrayal of male relationships.

Women are shown either as sweet young objects of romance or as threatening middle-aged predators.

The novel's main character, Samuel Pickwick

OLIVER TWIST Oliver Twist, subtitled The Parish Boy's

Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838.

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.

The book exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis": the large number of orphans in London in the Dickens era. 

 social novel Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time.

DAVID COPPERFIELD:  Its full title is The Personal History,

Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery.

Story from childhood to maturity

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERY: The Yellowplush Correspondence (1837-38) The Book of Snobs (1849), originally

appeared as The Snobs of England The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the

Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841) The Fitzboodle Papers (1842-43) The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844) Vanity Fair (1847-48) The History of Pendennis (1848-50) The History of Henry Esmond (1852) The New Comes (1853-55) The Virginians (1857-59)

His poetry: The Ballads of Policeman X The White Squall The Ballad of Bouillabaisse

Vanity Fair: A novel without Hero (1847-48)

Satire on the early 19th century England The title is taken from The Pilgrim’s Progress A never-ending fair held in a town called

Vanity, which is meant to represent man's sinful attachment to worldly things.

THE BRONTES: Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853) Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847) Anne Bronte: Agnes Grey (1847) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

GEORGE ELIOT: MARY ANN EVANS Adam’s Bede (1859), a full length novel and

it announced the arrival of a new writer. The Mill on the Floss (1860), partly

autobiographical story Silas Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe (1861),

a short novel of village life Romola (1863) Felix Hold the Radical (1866) Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life

(1871-72) Daniel Deronda (1876)

Leading writer of the age Adam Bede is her first novel The fictional community of Hayslope—a rural,

pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle"

between beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher. 

Arthur leaves Hayslope Hatty agrees to marry Adam, comes to know that she is pregnant. Goes to search for Arthur, gives birth to the baby in secrecy, the baby dies and Hatty is caught.

GEROGE MEREDITH: 1828-1909 His Poetry: Poems (1851) Modern Love, and Poems of the English

Roadside, with Poems and Ballads (1862) Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883) Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life (1887) A Reading of Earth (1888) Poems (1892) A Reading of Life, with other Poems (1901)

The Ordeal of the Richard Feverel (1859) Evan Harrington (1861) Rodha Flaming (1865) Vittoria (1867) The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871) Beauchamp’s Career (1876) The Egoist (1879) The Tragic Comedians (1880) Diana of the Crossways (1885) One of our Conquerors (1891) The Amazing Marriage (1895)

THOMAS CARLYLE: 1795-1881 The Life of Schiller (1825) Sartor Resartus The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrocks

(1833-34) The French Revolution (1837), a historical work The History of Frederich II of Prussia called

Frederich the Great (1858-1865) Chartism (1840) Past and Present (1843) Latter-day Pamphlets (1850) On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in

History (1841)

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY: 1800-59 His Poetry: Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) Prose: History of England

JOHN RUSKIN: 1819-1900 Modern Painters, the first Volume The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) The Stones of Venice (1851-53) The Two Paths (1859) Unto this Last (1860) Munera Pulveris (1862-63)] Sesame and Lilies (1865) The Crown of Wild Olive (1866) Praterita (1885). An autobiographical work