The Victorian Poetry, Prose, and Drama.

T h e  V i c t o r i a n  P o e t r y

C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s :

- developed in the context of the novel

- experimented with long narrative poems: A. Tennyson’s Maud, E. Barrett-Browning’s Aurora Leigh, R. Browning’s The Ring and the Book, & oth.

- function: accord. to public expectation poets should be sages with sth to teach x but: older generation poets discomforted with the public role: A. Tennyson, R. Browning, and M. Arnold > younger generation poets distanced themselves from the public, embracing an identity as bohemian rebels

F o r m :

- experiments with character and perspective: R. Browning’s The Ring and the Book with the plot presented through 10 different perspectives

- dramatic monologue

- visual detail = use of detail to construct visual images repres. the poem’s dominant emotion => brings poets and painters close together

- sound = use of sound to convey meaning ‘where words would not’ (Arthur Hallam): the beautiful cadences of A. Tennyson and C. A. Swinburne x the roughness of R. Browning and G. M. Hopkins

S u b j e c t :

- heroic materials of the past: M. Arnold

- materials of the poet’s own age: E. Barrett-Browning

< strongly infl. by the Romantics x but: lacked the confidence the Romantics felt in the power of the imagination

> W. Wordworth’s “Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey”, an address to his sister upon revisiting a landscape x M. Arnold’s “Resignation”, the same subject x but: his rocks and sky ‘seem to bear rather than rejoice’

> J. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” x T. Hardy’s “The Darkling Trush”, the nightingale becoming ‘an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small’

- Victorian reaction to the Romantic subjectivity:

(a) attenuated Romanticism = art pursued for its own sake: D. G. Rossetti, C. A. Swinburne, & oth.

(b) dramatic monologue = a lyric poem in the voice of a speaker ironically distinct from the poet, ‘lyric in expression’ x but: ‘dramatic in principle’ (R. Browning): R. Browning, A. Tennyson, & oth.

T h e  V i c t o r i a n  N o v e l

C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s :

- novel = dominant form, extraordinary various in style and genre:

> C. Dickens’s extravagant comedy

> the Brontë sisters’ gothic romance

> W. M. Thackeray’s satire

> G. Eliot’s psychological fiction

> by the end of the c. also crime, mystery, and horror novels, sci-fi, detective stories, etc.

- function: accord. to public expectation the novel should depict social problems to stimulate efforts for social reform: C. Dickens, E. Gaskell, & oth.

F o r m :

(a) a sprawling, panoramic expanse: orig. publ. in a serial form encouraging a certain kind of plotting and pacing > novels = ‘large loose baggy monsters’ (H. James)

(b) a multitude of characters, a number of plots: repres. a large and comprehensive social world

(c) a realistic presentation: repres. a social world sharing the features of the one we inhabit

C o n c e r n :

(a) the protagonist’s effort to define his/her place in society:

- stratified society x but: a chance for upward mobility: C. Dickens’s Pip can aspire to the ‘great expectations’ of the novel’s title, and C. Brontë’s Jane Eyre can marry her employer = a landed gentleman

(b) the woman’s struggle for self-realisation:

- woman = the repres. protagonist whose search for fulfilment emblematises the human condition

- ‘a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with meanness of opportunity’ (G. Eliot, Prelude to Middlemarch): Jane Eyre, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, even Becky Sharp, & oth.

> women for the 1^st time major authors: J. Austen, the Brontës, E. Gaskell, and G. Eliot <=> the novel easily accessible for women writers = conc. with the domestic life they knew well, not built on uni education, not burdened by an august tradition as poetry, etc.

T h e  V i c t o r i a n  P r o s e  ( i . e .  N o n - f i c t i o n )

< the term used to distinguish non-fiction prose writers from fiction writers and: to stress the centrality of argument and persuasion to Victorian intellectual life

- incl. history, biography, theology, criticism, etc.

- conc. with a wide range of controversial relig., political, and aesthetic topics

- the periodical = the vehicle of the Victorian prose

- function: didactic mission in urgent social and moral issues

> M. Arnold + W. Pater: culture, i.e. the serious appreciation of great works of lit., provides the immanence and meaning people once found in relig.

> M. Arnold x W. Pater: A.’s culture = a moral experience x P.’s culture = an aesthetic experience

=> moral + aesthetic experience = the basis for the claims of modern lit. criticism

T h e  V i c t o r i a n  D r a m a  a n d  T h e a t r e

- theatre = a flourishing and pop. institution

=> wide appeal x but: limited artistic achievement

- comedy of Victorian pretence and hypocrisy: G. B. Shaw’s ‘problem plays' on difficult social issues, infl. by the socially controversial plays of Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906) x O. Wilde’s comedies

- infl. of drama in the novel:

> C. Dickens composed many scenes in his novels with theatrical techniques

> W. M. Thackeray repres. himself as the puppetmaster of his characters + employed the stock gestures and expressions of melodramatic acting in his illustr. in Vanity Fair

> + A. Tennyson, R. Browning, and H. James = unsuccessful playwrights