Tuesday, 29 March 2016

Salient features of Victorian age and its poets too

Course- M.A. Sem- 2
Roll no. 21
 Paper no.0 6 (((Victorian Age)



Batch- 2015-17

Topic:-Salient features of Victorian age and its poets too


Submitted to- Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University





Introduction
 The Victorian Age
The Victorian age is believed to be from 1850-1900 when Victoria became Queen in 1837; English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age. Victorian age is regarded as a very important period of English Literature. In this age all forms of literature developed like poetry, novel, essay etc. Many writers gave their unique contribution in making this age important. In this age, the long struggle of the Anglo- Saxons for personal liberty was settled and democracy was established.


Salient Features
1)       An era of peace (the oxford movement)
2)       Conflict between science and religion
3)       Material Development
4)       Intellectual Development
5)       Morality
6)       The Revolt
7)       The new Education
8)       International Influences
9)       The Achievement of the age

The Victorian age is especially marked because of its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical inventions like spinning looms to steamboats and from matches to electric lights. All these material things as well as the growth of education have their influence upon the life of a people, and it is inevitable that they should react upon its prose and poetry; though as yet we are too much absorbed in our sciences and mechanics to determine accurately their influence upon literature. This age can be called as the Age of Compromise. In other words, we can say, there was death of agriculture. When everyone went to city, it became overpopulated. As people were working in industries, they got money and food but getting shelter was their main problem. There was dark and gloomy atmosphere everywhere. Majority of people were poor. The dominant people were money minded and so humans were used as machines. Workhouses were getting full as people were in search of job to earn money.

 Workhouses looked like prisons. They were given a fixed amount of meal. Women were kept away from men and their husbands too. Children too were kept away from adults. The people in the workhouses had to work for twelve hours whether it is a child or an adult. They had the permission to bath once in a week. Ill people were kept in sick wards. A number orphanages and prostitutes increased as woman many a times didn’t get work anywhere. She had to involve in prostitution and then chances of getting pregnant increased.
If this happened, the lady had to deliver the child and then left that child to orphanages. There was severe socio-economic depression people were threatened by the name of God. People had to work in harsh conditions as there was not enough. Electricity each job was hard and everyone hard to suffer a lot.


Achievements

 The Oxford movement

This movement took place in the nineteenth century. It was an outcome of a long controversy and ideological conflicts amongst different Christian sects and Churches and therefore it may be called a religious movement. Its name was Oxford movement as it was cantered at the University of Oxford that sought a renewal of Catholic or Roman Catholic, thought and practice within the Church of England in opposition to the Protestant tendencies of the church. This movement is also called Tractarianism Movement as it was carried throughout the tracts and pamphlets. The origin of the Oxford movement can be traced to the opposition of the scientific discoveries against age old religious beliefs and faiths. The aim of the movement was to rehabilitate the dignity of the church, to defend the church against the interference of the state, to fight against rationalism.

MAJOR WRITERS OF THE AGE

Alfred Tennyson (1809-92)

Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in England. Tennyson’s life is a remarkable one in this respect, that from beginning to end he seems to have been dominated by a single impulse, the impulse of poetry.

His work

The princess,
 Dora,
The Memoriam,
 Crossing the bar

Plays

Queen Mary (1875)
Harold (1876)
The falcon (1879) is a comedy based on a story from Boccaccio.
 The cup (1881) is based on a story from Plutarch.
The foresters (1892), dealing with the familiar Robin Hood them was produced in America

 Robert Browning (07 May 1812-12 December 1889)

He was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. Of all the poets in our literature, no other is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of men. He feels his mission of faith and courage in a world of doubt and timidity. He is better known today for his shorter poems such as The Pied Piper of Hamelin and How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. By Twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found. He was a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley.

His work
Poems
Paracelsus,
Pauline,
 Men &women,
The ring and the book,
The ring and the book the poem is composed of twelve books and four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (06 March 1806-29 June 1861)

Among the minor poets of the past century Elizabeth Barrett occupies perhaps the highest place in popular favour. She was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Her first adult collection, The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. She wrote prolifically between 1841-1844 producing poetry. Elizabeth’s volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this time, she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her work. She is remembered for poems like How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43, 1845) and Aurora Leigh (1856). She wrote her own Homeric Epic the Battle of Marathon: A Poem. Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with other poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics.
    
 Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822-15 April 1888)
In the world of literature Arnold has occupied for many years an authoritative position as critic and teacher, similar to that held by Ruskin in the world of art. He was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Arnold published his second volume of poems in 1852, Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. In 1853, he published poems: A New Edition, a selection from two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. In 1854, Poems: Second Series appeared; also a selection, it is included the new poem, Balder Dead. In 1867, Dover Beach depicted a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded. In his poetry, he derived not only the subject matter of his narrative poems from various traditional or literary sources but even much of the romantic melancholy of his earlier poems Senancour’s Obermann. Arnold, as shown it his essay on the study of poetry regarded poetry as “a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty”.  
 <Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828- 09 April 1882)
He was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848, with William Holman Hunt and john Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists an writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister. He worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova.

Charles Dickens (1812-70)
Charles Dickens was the most influential novelist of this age. More ever he was a social reformer. Dickens is one of our greatest artists. A glance through even this unsatisfactory biography gives us certain illuminating suggestions in regard to all of Dicken’s work. First he was child, poor and lonely, longing for love and society, second he was clerk in a lawyer’s office and in the court, third he was reporter and afterwards as manager of various newspaper and fourth, he was actor, always an actor in spirit. 
 His work

‘The pickwick papers’
‘Oliver Twist’
‘A tale of two cities’
‘David Copperfield’
His popularity was exploited in journalism for he edited ‘the Daily News’. In 1858 Dickens commenced his famous series of ‘Public reading’. They were also given in America with the greatest success.


 conclusion

This age was also a period of great scientific discovers and progress.  As a conclusion we can say that The Victorian Age represents the precursor of the modern era. It was, indeed a period of great achievements in all the domains, contributing essentially to the development of the British society.
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