Victorian Age & Literature

• Engels
• Voortgezet speciaal onderwijs
• Leerroute 4

Reading in the Victorian Age

What do you think you know about the Victorian Age?

The Victorian Age (1837-1901)

Industrialization

Empire

The Woman Question

The Serial Novel

Utilitarianism

Progress

Reform

Class

Lower Class

Middle Class

Upper Class

Few of them could read, write or even count

They worked 10 to 12 hours a day

Had servants

They had money and spare time to spend on reading

They donated libraries to their home town to show their wealth

Both males and females speak several languages

Children's Literature

* New

 * Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland

* Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Peter Rabbit

                                                 Fiction

                                                                                          Charles Dickens:

                                                                                            The Christmas Carol

                                                                                        Oliver Twist

The Detective Novel

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes

Next slide: What made the Detective Novel so popular? 

True or false.....

TRUE!

FALSE!

The detective characters were popular on television

were almost always in the shape of short stories

Men started to read more

The readers loved suspense, thriller and mystery

People had gaslights, so they could read after dark

The installments are cheap to print

The Gothic Novel

Characteristics of the Gothic Novel:

• Death and decay
• Dark and mysterious atmosphere
• Supernatural
• Insanity

Light

Gaslight: to read at night

Science

Science became accessible to all readers.

Female Authors

At the start of the Victorian Age females wrote under a male pseudonym, later they published under their own name.

Newspapers

Jack the Ripper: a real life gothic story! Newspapers were sold out with the Jack the Ripper stories. The unidentified and unknown serial killer raped and mutilated prostitutes in the City of London. 

Reforms Acts

Queen Victoria passed new laws to ensure children learned to read and write. This, together with public libraries, made knowledge accessible

Poetry: The Chimney Sweep

The Chimney Sweep

Children were used to sweep chimneys, due to their small stature. 

Usually orphans and children from poor families were recruited for this task. 

These children would not bathe often, sooth would get everywhere from their clothes to their lungs. There were many dangers of getting stuck or burned. 

William Blake's Poems

The Chimney Sweeper are two poems written by William Blake that address these issues. The first published in a volume called Songs of Innocence.

A few years after he published a second poem with the same title. This time in a volume called Songs of Innocence and Experience. The experience portion of the book tends to be darker than the first ones. 

Work on

Read both poems (studiewijzer -> Literature)

Answer the questions about them (B & D).

We'll discuss the answers the second hour.