Victorian Novel and Poetry Flashcards

Victorian Novel and Poetry

Hegel, in his Lectures of Aesthetics, considered the novel as the ultimate product of a prose-dominated world, one that no longer perceived the universe as inherently poetic.

Thomas Babbington Macaulay, in his essay on Milton, suggested that poetry's significance diminishes as civilization progresses.
Poetry is associated with the 'darker ages of magic,' its mystery revealed as illusion with the advent of enlightenment.

The early deaths of second-generation Romantic poets and Wordsworth's isolation contributed to a shift in literary focus.
Second-generation Romantic prose writers struggled to adapt to the evolving mindset and the growing urban population.
Prose became the predominant form in the 19th century, with a focus on depicting reality.
Anthony Trollope noted in 1870 that England had become a 'novel-reading people'.

Fiction aligned more closely with common reality.
The Victorian era saw the publication of approximately 40,000 novels.
Prose employed clearer and more accessible language, catering to the middle class and reflecting changing social conditions.
Authors adopted a personal, confessional, and conversational tone.

The implied meanings and unspoken elements in Victorian novels provide human context.
Example: A passage from George Eliot's Middlemarch illustrates how implied tones and unspoken intentions reveal the characters' underlying desires and conflicts.
dr Lydgate: ‘Understand, then, this is what I like to do’—There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond’s delicate arm. But for all that his will was not whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked out of the room in silence, with an intense determination to hinder what Lydgate liked to do.

Victorian novels displayed a strong sense of the past, influenced by writers like Sir Walter Scott.
Authors such as Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle engaged in social critique.
There was a preoccupation with progress, seen as the betterment of living conditions, although writers like Charles Dickens primarily identified problems rather than offering solutions.
Recurring themes included confinement, entombment, imprisonment, and rebirth.

Victorian novels often featured a return to rural and pastoral settings, echoing Romantic ideals.
Emily Brontë connected nature with the inner feelings of her characters.
Charlotte Brontë used rural settings as a backdrop for women's emancipation.
George Eliot set her stories in rural or small-town environments, emphasizing nature's importance against the backdrop of urbanization.
Thomas Hardy explored themes of confinement and tragedy against pastoral landscapes.

Victorian novels were characterized by numerous characters, intricate plots, cliffhangers, and detailed realistic descriptions.
They explored the complex relationship between the individual and society, and the torment of individualism under capitalism.
Realism was used to instill moral and ethical values (often reflecting a Protestant perspective).
Fiction often had a civilizing function and a moralizing tendency.

Thackeray presented the novelist as a puppeteer, viewing characters as mere creations of the author's mind, and expressed skepticism about the moralizing role of fiction.
The 'vanity of fiction' highlights the reader's awareness that the described reality is fictitious and that the author is present behind the performance.
The author acknowledges that everything written is a performance, openly stating this within the novel itself.

Exploration of the double, contrasting the social and anti-social aspects of the ego, and the battles between different narrators or viewpoints.
The realist novel split into naturalism and determinism.
Novelists depicted reality as a complex web of contradictory events and phenomena.
The double is reflected in double narrative fiction (e.g., Stevenson), presenting both a rational and an irrational side.

Thomas Hardy adopted a skeptical viewpoint, suggesting that reason fails in the novel and that the novelist lacks the power to change the world fundamentally.
Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and Kipling employed an impressionistic approach, emphasizing the relativity of truth.
The rapidly changing social reality driven by capitalist forces made it difficult for protagonists to adapt.
Authors avoided clear judgments, inviting readers to engage more deeply in understanding the texts.

The path to knowledge is presented through mystery, enhancing the appeal of fiction.
Reality is portrayed as multifaceted, with characters who are unpredictable and challenging to understand.
There is a rediscovery of the mystery inherent in human beings.

Henry James, in his preface to The Portrait of a Lady (1881), uses the metaphor of a house of fiction with countless windows. Each window represents an individual vision and perspective.
These windows, despite overlooking the same human scene, offer dissimilar reports due to the unique