English Literature 1660 - 1900

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1660-1798 Neoclassical Period

THREE NAMES

- The Neoclassical period ->      Ancient Greece and Rome as                                                                      absolute authorities

- The Augustan Age ->               Similarity with Roman Empire                                                                    during Augustus

- The Age of Reason ->               Optimistic view that intellect,                                                                     common sense, wisdom and                                                                       calm and balanced judgement 

                                                         (not emotion and lust) would

                                                          create a perfect world.

 

Developments:

- Rapidly developing arts and sciences (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton) and scientific discoveries

- 1748 discovery of Pompeii (stimulated classical architecture)

- The rise of capitalism: growing trade brought wealth into the country

- The rise of the middle class; dominated by trade, money and puritanism. People who were eager to obtain the respect and admiration of their fellow-men and who were aware that there was only one way to achieve this: to become rich.

Isaac Newton 

1642 - 1727

Literature

- Because of the discrepancy between the idealistic world (everything ruled by reason) and the real world (human emotions and lusts are often dominant) satire, both in prose and poetry, became the most popular genre of the Neoclassical period.

- Gap between 1) Neoclassical prose and poetry read by the higher circles of society (upper class) and 2) literature for the middle class: religious works and books with recognisable (middle class) characters and a clear moral at the end. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (no work of art). The outlook of the middle class was moral, practical and down-to-earth.

- The rise of the novel: e.g. Defoe, Swift, Austen

1798 - 1830 Romantic Period

1798,  William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

 Lyrical Ballads

Poetry of simplicity, both in form and in contents.

In a period of social change and growing unrest people longed for another world.

William Wordsworth 1770 - 1850

Developments:

- Industrial revolution: brought wealth and prosperity to the country

  

- Britain grew from a agricultural nation into an industrialised 

- Farmers had to find work in factories in the cities (long hours, miserable working conditions)

- The gap between rich and poor became wider; wealth wasn’t equally divided  social unrest

- The ideals of the French revolution (1789), freedom, equality and the abolition of class

    distinctions appealed to many, especially young, people all over Europe, including English       

    Romantic poets (e.g. Lord Byron)

Literature:

- Lyrical Ballads, a volume of poetry, is the starting point of the English Romantic Period. Poetry of simplicity, guided no longer by Reason, but by Imagination.

- The five major English Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelly and Byron.

- Their shared believes: a deep trust in non-rational forces of emotion, intuition and imagination and the profound conviction that reason and intellect are not enough to comprehend the world.

- Romantic Poets: an individualistic voice addressing the individual reader. Subjective poetry.

Subjects 

• Nature (life-giving force)
  
• Simple country folk (people living in nature)
  
• Idealized past (escape in time)
  
• Supernatural (anti-intellectual attitude)
  
• The child (supreme example of innocence uncorrupted by the world)
  
• Exotic cultures (escape in place) 

William Turner  (1842)

Casper David Friedrich (1810)

John Constable (1821)

1830-1900 The Victorian Age

Queen Victoria 1886

“The sun never sets on the British Empire”

England at the heights of its powers.

Developments

• Victoria on the throne from 1837 – 1901. Died at the age of 81 years.
  
• Britannia truly ruled the waves  strong sense of pride, optimism and self-confidence
  
• But also: findings of modern science changed the foundations of the world as people knew it (e.g. the evolution theory of Darwin 1859)  doubt, anxiety, uncertainty and pessimism
  
• Industrial revolution caused drastic changes in the structure of English society: It had given some ambitious, enterprising people opportunities to make a fortune; but it had also created a huge industrial proletariat. 
• Salvation Army founded by Catherine and William Booth in 1865.
  
• Demands (by the lower, middle ánd upper classes) for social reform resulted in a number of Reform Bills over a period of time, dealing with child labour, a reduction of working hours, basic education and the right to vote.  

The Victorian Era ended with WO I.

Literature

• The century of the novel: e.g. Charles Dickens, Brontë sisters
  
• Audiences were larger than ever before, due to improved education, but especially to the instalment system, in which novels appeared in cheap weekly or monthly part before being published complete.
  
• Middle class now formed the backbone of society: literature aimed at this large audience.
  
• Authors described the contemporary society and its dilemmas. Dickens especially had a genuine concern for the poorer classes.
  
• In poetry the spirit of the Romantics lingered on, but without the intensity and power of earlier poets.
  
• Poetry sometimes addressed ‘The Victorian Crisis’: the struggle between faith and doubt, hope and disillusion.
  

Charles Dickens 1812 - 1870

Portrait (1834) of the Brontë sisters