11-] English Literature

11- ) English Literature

Victorian literature (1837–1901)

Sage writing

During these years, sage writing developed as a new literary genre in which the author sought "to express notions about the world, man's situation in it, and how he should live." John Holloway identified Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), George Eliot (1819–1880), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), and Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) as writers of this type. Foremost among them was Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher who became "the undoubted head of English letters" in the 19th century. Known as the Sage of Chelsea, the highly prolific author criticized the Industrial Revolution, preached Hero-worship, and rebuked political economy in a series of works written in Carlylese, the name given to his unique style His influence on Victorian literature was nearly universal; in 1855, Eliot wrote that "there is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle's writings;" with the effect that if his books "were all burnt as the grandest of Suttees on his funeral pile, it would be only like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest."

John Ruskin (1819–1900) was an Anglo-Scottish art critic and philosopher who wrote in a similar vein, regarding Carlyle as his master. The early part of his career was devoted to aesthetics, championing Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He later turned to ethics, expounding his ideas on educational reform and political economy, which were to have great influence on practices in England and throughout the world. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and critic who is also regarded as a sage writer, famous for his criticism of philistinism.

The Victorian novel

It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers, and monthly serialising of fiction also encouraged this surge in popularity, further upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832". This was in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization, and the social, political, and economic issues associated with it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity. Significant early examples of this genre include Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1849).

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the history of English literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, and the failures of the legal system in Bleak House.[138] An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847). The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë's most famous work, was the first of the sisters' novels to achieve success. Emily Brontë's (1818–1848) novel was Wuthering Heights and, according to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers,"[140] and led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man.[141] The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë is now considered to be one of the first feminist novels.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) was also a successful writer and her North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.[143] Anthony Trollope's (1815–1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England. George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially Middlemarch (1871–72), are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.

George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), and The Egoist (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th century but then seriously declined. An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), including The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). Hardy is a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, and like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society. Another significant late-19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903), who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street (1891).

Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald (1824–1905), the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858).[148] William Morris (1834–1896) wrote a series of romances in the 1880s and 1890s which are regarded as the first works of high fantasy. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language.[150] Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was an important Scottish writer at the end of the nineteenth century, author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and the historical novel Kidnapped (1886). H.G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905).

EARLY NINTEENTH CENTURY POETS (THE ROMANTICS)

The main stream of poetry in the eighteenth century had been orderly and polished, without much feeling for nature. The publication of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 came as a shock. The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the beginning of the romantic age. They together with Southey are known as the Lake Poets, because they liked the Lake district in England and lived in it.

William Wordsworth ((1770-1850) was the poet of nature. In the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. He defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions”. His views on poetical style are the most revolutionary.

In his early career as a poet, Wordsworth wrote poems like An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. The Prelude is the record of his development as a poet. It is a philosophical poem. He wrote some of the best lyric poems in the English language like The Solitary Reaper, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Ode on the Itimations of Immorality, Resolution and Independence etc. Tintern Abbey is one of the greatest poems of Wordsworth.

Samuel Tylor Coleridge (1772-1814) wrote four poems for The Lyrical Ballads. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the most noteworthy. Kubla Khan, Christabel, Dejection an Ode, Frost at Midnight etc. are other important poems. Biographia Literaria is his most valuable prose work. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare are equally important.

Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was based on his travels. Don Juan ranks as one of the greatest of satirical poems. The Vision of Judgment is a fine political satire in English.

PB Shelley (1792-1822) was a revolutionary figure of Romantic period. When Shelley was studying at Oxford, he wrote the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism which caused his expulsion from the university. Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam and Alastor are his early poems. Prometheus Unbound is a combination of the lyric and the drama. Shelley wrote some of the sweetest English lyrics like To a Skylark, The Cloud, To Night etc. Of his many odes, the most remarkable is  Ode to the West Wind. Adonais is an elegy on the death of John Keats.

John Keats (1795-1821) is another great Romantic poet who wrote some excellent poems in his short period of life. His Isabella deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two wicked brothers. The unfinished epic poem Hyperion is modelled on Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Eve of St Agnes is regarded as his finest narrative poem. The story of Lamia is taken from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Endymion, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn are very famous. His Letters give give a clear insight into his mind and artistic development.

Robert Southey is a minor Romantic poet. His poems, which are of great bulk, include Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Holly-tree.

American novel (From Romanticism to realism)

By the mid-19th century, the pre-eminence of literature from the British Isles began to be challenged by writers from the former American colonies. A major influence on American writers at this time was Romanticism, which gave rise to New England Transcendentalism, and the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Thomas Carlyle had a strong influence on Emerson, transcendentalism, and American writers generally, particularly his novel Sartor Resartus, of which the impact upon American literature has been described as "so vast, so pervasive, that it is difficult to overstate."

The romantic American novel developed fully with Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804–1864) The Scarlet Letter (1850), a stark drama of a woman cast out of her community for committing adultery. Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819–1891). In Moby-Dick (1851), an adventurous whaling voyage becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against the elements. By the 1880s, however, psychological and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the novel.

American realist fiction has its beginnings in the 1870s with the works of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James.

Mark Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast—in the border state of Missouri. His regional masterpieces were the novels Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Twain's style changed the way Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.

Henry James (1843–1916) was a major American novelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his adult years in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe. James confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directly about it. His works include The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886).

Genre fiction

The premier ghost story writer of the 19th century was Sheridan Le Fanu. His works include the macabre mystery novel Uncle Silas (1865), and his Gothic novella Carmilla (1872) tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire. Bram Stoker's horror story Dracula (1897) belongs to a number of literary genres, including vampire literature, horror fiction, gothic novel and invasion literature.

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based "consulting detective", famous for his intellectual prowess. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring Holmes, which were published between 1887 and 1927. All but four Holmes stories are narrated by Holmes' friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. Watson. The Lost World literary genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial adventurers. H. Rider Haggard wrote one of the earliest examples, King Solomon's Mines, in 1885. Contemporary European politics and diplomatic maneuverings informed Anthony Hope's Ruritanian adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).

LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY POETS (Victorian Poets)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) is a chief figure of later nineteenth century poetry. His volume of Poems contain notable poems like The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters, Ulysses, Morte d’ Arthur.The story ofMorte d’ Arthur is based on Thomas Malory’s poemMorte d’ Arthur. In Memoriam(1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. In Memoriam is the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest poetry he ever produced. Maud and Other Poems was received with amazement by the public. Idylls of the King, Enoch Arden, Haroldetc. are his other works.

Robert Browning (1812-89) is an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic monologues made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.  He popularized ‘dramatic monologue’. The Ring and the Book is an epic-length poem in which he justifies the ways of God to humanity  Browning is popularly known by his shorter poems, such as Porphyria’s Lover,  Rabbi Ben Ezra, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin. He married Elizabeth Barrett, another famous poet during the Victorian period. Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea Del Sarto and My Last Duchess are famous dramatic monologues.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School. Arnold is sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.

Arnold valued natural scenery for its peace and permanence in contrast with the ceaseless change of human things. His descriptions are often picturesque, and marked by striking similes. Thyrsis, Dover Beach and The Scholar Gipsy are his notable poems.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator in the late nineteenth century England. Rossotti’s poems were criticized as belonging to the ‘Fleshy School’ of poetry. Rossetti wrote about nature with his eyes on it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wife of Robert Browning wrote some excellent poems in her volume of Sonnets from the Portuguese.

AC Swinburne followed the style of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne’s famous poems works are Poems and Ballads and tristram of Lyonesse.

Edward Fitzgerald translated the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald’s translation is loose and did not stick too closely to the original.

Rudyard Kipling and Francis Thompson also wrote some good poems during the later nineteenth century.

Nineteenth Century Novelists  (Victorian Novelists)

Jane Austen 1775-1817 is one of the greatest novelists of nineteenth century English literature. Her first novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) deals with the life of middle class people. The style is smooth and charming. Her second novel Sense and Sensibility followed the same general lines of Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion are some of the other famous works. Jane Austen’s plots are skillfully constructed. Her characters are developed with minuteness and accuracy.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is considered as one of the greatest English novelists. Dickens has contributed some evergreen characters to English literature. He was a busy successful novelist during his lifetime. The Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are two early novels. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby , David Copperfield, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are some of the most famous novels of Charles Dickens. No English novelists excel Dickens in the multiplicity of his characters and situations. He creates a whole world people for the readers. He sketched both lower and middle class people in London.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta and sent to England for education. William Thackeray is now chiefly remembered for his novel The Vanity Fair. While Dickens was in full tide of his success, Thackeray was struggling through neglect and contempt to recognition. Thackeray’s genius blossomed slowly. Thackeray’s characters are fearless and rough. He protested against the feeble characters of his time. The Rose and the Ring, Rebecca and Rowena, and The Four Georges are some of his works.

The Brontës

Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were the daughters of an Irish clergy man Patrick Brontë, who held a living in Yorkshire. Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor failed to find a publisher and only appeared after her death. Jane Eyre is her greatest novel. the plot is weak and melodramatic. This was followed by Shirley and Villette. Her plots are overcharged and she is largely restricted to her own experiments.

Emily Brontë wrote less than Charlottë. Her one and only novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is unique in English literature. It is the passionate love story of Heathcliff and Catherine.

Anne Bronte’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are much inferior to those of her sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.

George Eliot (1819-1880) is the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede was her first novel. Her next novel, The Mill on the Floss is partly autobiographical. Silas Marner is a shorter novel which gives excellent pictures of village life. Romola, Middle March and Daniel Deronda are other works of George Eliot.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) published his first work Desperate Remedies anonymously. Under the Greenwood Tree, one of the lightest and most appealing of his novels established him as a writer. It was set in the rural area he was soon to make famous as Wessex. Far From the Madding Crowd is a tragi-comedy set in Wessex. The rural background of the story is an integral part of the novel, which reveals the emotional depths which underlie rustic life. The novel, The Return of the Native is a study of man’s helplessness before the mighty Fate. The Mayor of Casterbridge also deals with the theme of Man versus Destiny. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure aroused the hostility of conventional readers due to their frank handling of sex and religion. At the beginning Tess of the D’Urbervilles was rejected by the publishers. The outcry with the publication of Jude the Obscure led Hardy in disgust to abandon novel writing. Thomas Hardy’s characters are mostly men and women living close to the soil.

Mary Shelley, the wife of Romantic poet PB Shelley is now remembered as a writer of her famous novel of terror, Frankestein. Frankestein can be regarded as the first attempt at science fiction. The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s another work.

Edgar Allan Poe was a master of Mystery stories. Poe’s powerful description of astonishing and unusual events has the attraction of terrible things. Some of his major works are The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Mystery of Red Death.

Besides poetry collections like The Lady of the Last Ministrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and The Lord of the Isles, Sir Walter Scott produced enormous number of novels. Waverly, Old Mortality, The Black Dwarf, The Pirate, and Kenilworth are some of them. He was too haste in writing novels and this led to the careless, imperfect stories. He has a great place in the field of historical novels.

Frederick Marryat’s sea novels were popular in the nineteenth century. His earliest novel was The Naval Officer. All his best books deal with the sea. Marryat has a considerable gift for plain narrative and his humour is entertaining. Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful and Japhet in Search of His Father are some of his famous works.

R.L. Stevenson’s The Treasure Island, George Meredith’s The Egoist, Edward Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Charles Reade’s Mask and Faces, Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, Joseph Conard’s Lord Jim, Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlet Letter etc. are some of other famous works of nineteenth century English literature.

Other Nineteenth Century Prose

Charles Lamb is one of the greatest essayists of nineteenth century. Lamb started his career as a poet but is now remembered for his well-known Essays of Elia. His essays are unequal in English. He is so sensitive and so strong. Besides Essays of Elia, other famous essays are Dream Children and Tales from Shakespeare. His sister, Mary Lamb also wrote some significant essays.

William Hazlitt’s reputation chiefly  rests on his lectures and essays on literary and general subjects. His lectures, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, The English Poets and The English Comic Writers are important.

Thomas De Quincey’s famous work is Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is written in the manner of dreams. His Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets contain some good chapters on Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Thomas Carlyle is another prose writer of nineteenth century. His works consisted of translations, essays, and biographies. Of these the best are his translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, his The Life of Schiller, and his essays on Robert Burns and Walter Scott.

Thomas Macaulay (Lord Macaulay) wrote extensively. He contributed for The Encyclopedia of Britannica and The Edinburgh Review. His History of England is filled with numerous and picturesque details.

Charles Darwin is one of the greatest names in modern science. He devoted almost wholly to biological and allied studies. His chief works are The Voyage of the Beagle, Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man.

John Ruskin’s works are of immense volume and complexity. His longest book is Modern Painters. The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice expound his views on artistic matters. Unto this Last is a series of articles on political economy.

Samuel Butler, the grandson of Dr. Samuel Butler was inspired by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Evolution Old and New, Unconcious Memory, Essays on Life, Art and Science, The Way of All Flesh etc. rank him as one of the greatest prose writers of ninteenth century. He was an acute and original thinker. He exposed all kinds of reliogious, political, and social shams and hypocrisies of his period.

Besides being a great poet, Mathew Arnold also excelled as an essayist. His prose works are large in bulk and wide in range. Of them all his critical essays are probably of the greatest value. Essays in Criticism, Culture and Anarchy, and Literature and Dogma have permanent value.

Lewis Carroll, another prose writer of nineteenth century is now remembered for her immortal work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Ever since its publication, this novel continues to be popular among both the children and adult readers.