By clicking the link below, you'll be able to watch Olver Twist, the film directed by Roman Polanski, with English captions:
Link to Movie
giovedì 26 gennaio 2017
update
LITERATURE III - Read posts about Medieval Literature and Development of the English Language. I will introduce the Canterbury Tales this week, posting reading material by Thursday.
LITERATURE IV - Read posts about: Victorian Age, Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist), and be familiar with the Guide to English Literature. We will discuss the authors, historical context and read some excerpts.
LITERATURE V - Read posts about: Victorian Age, Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist), and be familiar with the Guide to English Literature. I will post questions from previous years' "seconda e terza prova d'inglese - Maturità" for you to focus your study time better.
LITERATURE IV - Read posts about: Victorian Age, Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist), and be familiar with the Guide to English Literature. We will discuss the authors, historical context and read some excerpts.
LITERATURE V - Read posts about: Victorian Age, Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist), and be familiar with the Guide to English Literature. I will post questions from previous years' "seconda e terza prova d'inglese - Maturità" for you to focus your study time better.
lunedì 23 gennaio 2017
Middle Ages Cheatslide
Major Points to remember about the Middle Ages
Link to Middle Ages Cheatslide
Link to Middle Ages Cheatslide
OLIVER TWIST PLOT SUMMARY
Plot Overview of OLIVER TWIST by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist is born in
a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother,
whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after
Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in
a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a
workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking
for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle,
offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the
workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish
chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker,
Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole,
makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks
him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away
at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.
Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.
Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
LITERATURE V - CHARLES DICKENS BIO
Charles Dickens Biography
After a few months Dickens's father was released from prison and Charles was allowed to go back to school. At fifteen his formal education ended and he found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night. From 1830 he worked as a shorthand reporter in the courts and afterwards as a parliamentary and newspaper reporter.
In 1833 Dickens began to contribute short stories and essays to periodicals. A Dinner at Popular Walk was Dickens's first published story. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine in December 1833. In 1834, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the soon to be famous pseudonym Boz. Dickens's first book, a collection of stories titled Sketches by Boz, was published in 1836. In the same year he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle. Together they had 10 children before they separated in 1858.
Although Dickens's main profession was as a novelist, he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life, editing The Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers gave him the opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at the beginning of his career.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837. Pickwick became one of the most popular works of the time, continuing to be so after it was published in book form in 1837. After the success of Pickwick Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate: Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840-41), all being published in monthly instalments before being made into books.
In 1856 his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place, an estate he had admired since childhood. In 1858 Dickens began a series of paid readings, which became instantly popular. In all, Dickens performed more than 400 times. In that year, after a long period of difficulties, he separated from his wife. It was also around that time that Dickens became involved in an affair with a young actress named Ellen Ternan. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but it was clearly central to Dickens's personal and professional life.
In the closing years of his life Dickens worsened his declining health by giving numerous readings. During his readings in 1869 he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. He retreated to Gad's Hill and began to work on Edwin Drood, which was never completed.
Charles Dickens died at home on June 9, 1870 after suffering a stroke. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads:
"He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed;
and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the
world."
venerdì 20 gennaio 2017
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest undoubted living relatives of English are Scots and Frisian. Frisian is a language spoken by approximately half a million people in the Dutch province of Friesland, in nearby areas of Germany, and on a few islands in the North Sea.
The history of the English language has traditionally been divided into three main periods: Old English (450-1100 AD), Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD) and Modern English (since 1500). Over the centuries, the English language has been influenced by a number of other languages.
Old English (450 - 1100 AD): During the 5th Century AD three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to the British Isles from various parts of northwest Germany as well as Denmark. These tribes were warlike and pushed out most of the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants from England into Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today.
Through the years, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes mixed their different Germanic dialects. This group of dialects forms what linguists refer to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The word "English" was in Old English "Englisc", and that comes from the name of the Angles. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin.
Before the Saxons the language spoken in what is now England was a mixture of Latin and various Celtic languages which were spoken before the Romans came to Britain (54-5BC). The Romans brought Latin to Britain, which was part of the Roman Empire for over 400 years. Many of the words passed on from this era are those coined by Roman merchants and soldiers. These include win (wine), candel (candle), belt (belt), weall (wall). ("Language Timeline", The British Library Board)
The influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight. In fact, very few Celtic words have lived on in the English language. But many of place and river names have Celtic origins: Kent, York, Dover, Cumberland, Thames, Avon, Trent, Severn.
The arrival of St. Augustine in 597 and the introduction of Christianity into Saxon England brought more Latin words into the English language. They were mostly concerned with the naming of Church dignitaries, ceremonies, etc. Some, such as church, bishop, baptism, monk, eucharist and presbyter came indirectly through Latin from the Greek.
Around 878 AD Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, invaded the country and English got many Norse words into the language, particularly in the north of England. The Vikings, being Scandinavian, spoke a language (Old Norse) which, in origin at least, was just as Germanic as Old English.
Words derived from Norse include: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. ("The Origin and History of the English Language", Kryss Katsiavriades)
Several written works have survived from the Old English period. The most famous is a heroic epic poem called "Beowulf". It is the oldest known English poem and it is notable for its length - 3,183 lines. Experts say "Beowulf" was written in Britain more than one thousand years ago. The name of the person who wrote it is unknown.
Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD): After William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England in 1066 AD with his armies and became king, he brought his nobles, who spoke French, to be the new government. The Old French took over as the language of the court, administration, and culture. Latin was mostly used for written language, especially that of the Church. Meanwhile, The English language, as the language of the now lower class, was considered a vulgar tongue.
By about 1200, England and France had split. English changed a lot, because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about 300 years. The use of Old English came back, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. Most of the words embedded in the English vocabulary are words of power, such as crown, castle, court, parliament, army, mansion, gown, beauty, banquet, art, poet, romance, duke, servant, peasant, traitor and governor. ("Language Timeline", The British Library Board)
Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison). ("The Origin and History of the English Language", Kryss Katsiavriades)
The Middle English is also characterized for the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift. It was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift occurred during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", a collection of stories about a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England. The portraits that he paints in his Tales give us an idea of what life was like in fourteenth century England.
Modern English (1500 to the present): Modern English developed after William Caxton established his printing press at Westminster Abbey in 1476. Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany around 1450, but Caxton set up England's first press. The Bible and some valuable manuscripts were printed. The invention of the printing press made books available to more people. The books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English.
By the time of Shakespeare's writings (1592-1616), the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. There were three big developments in the world at the beginning of Modern English period: the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the British Colonialism.
It was during the English Renaissance that most of the words from Greek and Latin entered English. This period in English cultural history (early 16th century to the early 17th century) is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era", taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I there was an explosion of culture in the form of support of the arts, popularization of the printing press, and massive amounts of sea travel.
England began the Industrial Revolution (18th century) and this had also an effect on the development of the language as new words had to be invented or existing ones modified to cope with the rapid changes in technology. New technical words were added to the vocabulary as inventors designed various products and machinery. These words were named after the inventor or given the name of their choice (trains, engine, pulleys, combustion, electricity, telephone, telegraph, camera etc).
Britain was an Empire for 200 years between the 18th and 20th centuries and English language continued to change as the British Empire moved across the world - to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, Asia and Africa. They sent people to settle and live in their conquered places and as settlers interacted with natives, new words were added to the English vocabulary. For example, 'kangaroo' and 'boomerang' are native Australian Aborigine words, 'juggernaut' and 'turban' came from India. (See more borrowings from different languages.)
English continues to change and develop, with hundreds of new words arriving every year. But even with all the borrowings from many other languages the heart of the English language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English. The grammar of English is also distinctly Germanic - three genders (he, she and it) and a simple set of verb tenses.
Thanks: http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-language-history.html
The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest undoubted living relatives of English are Scots and Frisian. Frisian is a language spoken by approximately half a million people in the Dutch province of Friesland, in nearby areas of Germany, and on a few islands in the North Sea.
The history of the English language has traditionally been divided into three main periods: Old English (450-1100 AD), Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD) and Modern English (since 1500). Over the centuries, the English language has been influenced by a number of other languages.
Old English (450 - 1100 AD): During the 5th Century AD three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to the British Isles from various parts of northwest Germany as well as Denmark. These tribes were warlike and pushed out most of the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants from England into Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today.
Through the years, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes mixed their different Germanic dialects. This group of dialects forms what linguists refer to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The word "English" was in Old English "Englisc", and that comes from the name of the Angles. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin.
Before the Saxons the language spoken in what is now England was a mixture of Latin and various Celtic languages which were spoken before the Romans came to Britain (54-5BC). The Romans brought Latin to Britain, which was part of the Roman Empire for over 400 years. Many of the words passed on from this era are those coined by Roman merchants and soldiers. These include win (wine), candel (candle), belt (belt), weall (wall). ("Language Timeline", The British Library Board)
The influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight. In fact, very few Celtic words have lived on in the English language. But many of place and river names have Celtic origins: Kent, York, Dover, Cumberland, Thames, Avon, Trent, Severn.
The arrival of St. Augustine in 597 and the introduction of Christianity into Saxon England brought more Latin words into the English language. They were mostly concerned with the naming of Church dignitaries, ceremonies, etc. Some, such as church, bishop, baptism, monk, eucharist and presbyter came indirectly through Latin from the Greek.
Around 878 AD Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, invaded the country and English got many Norse words into the language, particularly in the north of England. The Vikings, being Scandinavian, spoke a language (Old Norse) which, in origin at least, was just as Germanic as Old English.
Words derived from Norse include: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. ("The Origin and History of the English Language", Kryss Katsiavriades)
Several written works have survived from the Old English period. The most famous is a heroic epic poem called "Beowulf". It is the oldest known English poem and it is notable for its length - 3,183 lines. Experts say "Beowulf" was written in Britain more than one thousand years ago. The name of the person who wrote it is unknown.
Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD): After William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England in 1066 AD with his armies and became king, he brought his nobles, who spoke French, to be the new government. The Old French took over as the language of the court, administration, and culture. Latin was mostly used for written language, especially that of the Church. Meanwhile, The English language, as the language of the now lower class, was considered a vulgar tongue.
By about 1200, England and France had split. English changed a lot, because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about 300 years. The use of Old English came back, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. Most of the words embedded in the English vocabulary are words of power, such as crown, castle, court, parliament, army, mansion, gown, beauty, banquet, art, poet, romance, duke, servant, peasant, traitor and governor. ("Language Timeline", The British Library Board)
Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison). ("The Origin and History of the English Language", Kryss Katsiavriades)
The Middle English is also characterized for the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift. It was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift occurred during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.
The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", a collection of stories about a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England. The portraits that he paints in his Tales give us an idea of what life was like in fourteenth century England.
Modern English (1500 to the present): Modern English developed after William Caxton established his printing press at Westminster Abbey in 1476. Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in Germany around 1450, but Caxton set up England's first press. The Bible and some valuable manuscripts were printed. The invention of the printing press made books available to more people. The books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English.
By the time of Shakespeare's writings (1592-1616), the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. There were three big developments in the world at the beginning of Modern English period: the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the British Colonialism.
It was during the English Renaissance that most of the words from Greek and Latin entered English. This period in English cultural history (early 16th century to the early 17th century) is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era", taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I there was an explosion of culture in the form of support of the arts, popularization of the printing press, and massive amounts of sea travel.
England began the Industrial Revolution (18th century) and this had also an effect on the development of the language as new words had to be invented or existing ones modified to cope with the rapid changes in technology. New technical words were added to the vocabulary as inventors designed various products and machinery. These words were named after the inventor or given the name of their choice (trains, engine, pulleys, combustion, electricity, telephone, telegraph, camera etc).
Britain was an Empire for 200 years between the 18th and 20th centuries and English language continued to change as the British Empire moved across the world - to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, Asia and Africa. They sent people to settle and live in their conquered places and as settlers interacted with natives, new words were added to the English vocabulary. For example, 'kangaroo' and 'boomerang' are native Australian Aborigine words, 'juggernaut' and 'turban' came from India. (See more borrowings from different languages.)
English continues to change and develop, with hundreds of new words arriving every year. But even with all the borrowings from many other languages the heart of the English language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English. The grammar of English is also distinctly Germanic - three genders (he, she and it) and a simple set of verb tenses.
Thanks: http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-language-history.html
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE
In a Nutshell
What do these things have in common?
A king wielding a magical sword named Excalibur
A rude red-haired guy telling a highly-embellished fart joke
Truly righteous jousting tournaments with armored knights
A woman who sees visions of Jesus and warns people to repent their sins
And you thought you might be in for a real snooze fest with this one. In actuality, the Medieval Period's got something for everyone. Probably because it spanned a really, really long time.
The phrase "Medieval English literature" refers to works that were produced in England from about the fall of Rome (the late 400s CE) to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. So, we're talking from the end of the Classical period, when people flitted around in togas, to the Renaissance, when women flitted around in cumbersome Elizabethan attire and manly men wore tights.
For those of you who are keeping score—and we hope you are—that's about one thousand years of literature. Of course, scholars came up with these period divisions long after the Renaissance. And yes, they're kind of arbitrary. It's not as if people woke up every morning in the 14th century, rolled out of bed, and said, "Alas, I'm still in the medieval period. Time to not take a bath."
There is some method to the madness of these literary epochs, though.
Consider, for a moment, how a lot of early medieval literature circulated orally. Back then, human stories were passed from mouth to mouth—hopefully without spreading the Black Death—before being written down in manuscript. That's how we got epics like Beowulf.
The story of Beowulf existed for hundreds of years as a tale told by scops, who were like minstrels, only much beardier. Many scops came and went before this bit o' bardic entertainment made it onto the page. Which is why we cut off the Medieval Period at about the time the printing press gets up and running.
Once printing started, the oral literary tradition quickly became obsolete. Printing allowed for more people to actually go out and read the stuff coming off the presses for themselves. So stories got (re)produced and disseminated far faster than ever before. Literature became, in a way, much more democratic than before.
Since the manuscripts of the Middle Ages were all written and illustrated by hand—the word "manuscript" literally means written by hand—it was one long process. To make a long story short, lots of hunch-backed monks ruined their eyes and got epic cases of carpal tunnel syndrome so that we can get our Chaucer on. Say thanks to the nice monks.
And did we mention that most people were illiterate during the Middle Ages? The printing press doesn't show up in England until William Caxton brings it over in 1473. Before then, if you weren't part of the educated elite—which basically meant the clergy and the nobility—you probably couldn't read or write. Bummer.
But with the arrival of the printing press, copies of popular works were being churned out faster than the speed of ten thousand monks' pens. This mass-produced material was way cheaper than the old, hand-written manuscripts. So suddenly, your average person-on-the-street could afford to purchase books.
And the availability of those books helped to spur (encourage) a drastic uptick in literacy.
But literacy in which languages, you might ask? Well, during the Medieval Period, works were written in a range of languages, including Latin, Old English, French, Celtic (Welsh), and various Middle English dialects.
That crisp BBC accent didn't spring, fully formed, from the tongues of 4th century Britons. They were talkin' and writin' and readin' in all kinds of ways back then. So Medieval English are those that were penned in the British Isles during the period in question, regardless of the language the writer chooses.
Some of the movement's big wigs include:
Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth, who both wrote histories of Britain. Only, they wrote them in Latin—the international language of learning and permanence, people thought back then—not English.
Marie de France. She's associated with the English royal court, but wrote her works in French.
Geoffrey Chaucer. Enough said.
The Gawain Poet, who penned his poems in a different dialect of Middle English than Chaucer.
All the old, old timers who spun the stories of the The Mabinogi, which draw on Celtic mythology and early Medieval traditions. These were originally written down in Welsh. Delightful.
Did we mention there's something for everyone in this period? We think we might have. Now, grab some hot cocoa and get ready for some sober religious sermons and exempla, tales of courtly love, knights jousting it out on the battlefield, epic poetry about whiskery warriors, and histories that read suspiciously like Harlequin romance novels. (We're looking at you, King Arthur.)
And all of this Medieval Lit is served up with a heaping side helping of the irreverence you've probably learned to expect from this period in history. There will be dirty jokes, beast fables, and rollicking theatrical renditions of Bible stories.
Hold onto your jousting helmets, students! Next stop: 5th century, Britain.
Why Should I Care?
This one's easy. Medieval literature has been hugely influential in modern popular culture. Pretty much any sword-and-sorcery adventure ultimately descends from this period, and even some works you wouldn't think of bear its subtle traces. Let's get medieval on a few examples, shall we?
Here's a somewhat subtle case of medieval inspiration: Twilight. What's Twilight other than a modern-day re-hashing of the Lancelot-Arthur-Guinevere love triangle… only with a lot more brooding and a lot more chiseled abs?
All that overwrought, delayed and frustrated desire between Bella and Edward just screams courtly love. Plus, there's the added bonus of that whole Marie de France, Bisclavret werewolf thing going on with Jacob.
What's that? You say you really enjoyed The Hobbit? This one goes all the way back to Beowulf. J.R.R. Tolkien was a huge fan of Anglo-Saxon literature, and outright stole from Beowulf in creating his own work. No Beowulf, no hobbits. It really is that simple.
And then there's good old King Arthur. "Gee, I really hate those movies and television shows about King Arthur and his knights," said no one, ever. Arthur ruled back in the medieval period, and that trend shows no signs of stopping.
Just think of some of the modern works that feature him and his knights of that infamously-round table. You've got Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Excalibur, Merlin, The Sword in the Stone, King Arthur… Those are all up there on our Arthurian playlist. What's on yours?
We'd bet our best sword—okay, maybe our second-best—that you can add a few more to this list in short order.
Finally, there's the assortment of oddities that most of us have enjoyed in one form or another, or at least have a nodding familiarity with: Renaissance fairs (which should, in our opinion, be re-christened as "Medieval Fairs"), the Excalibur hotel in Las Vegas, Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland, and Medieval Times restaurant, where you can get your joust on while eating chicken without utensils.
Now, we're not suggesting that your metric for discriminating important literature from unimportant literature should be how many Disney movies have been made out of it. What we're trying to point out is that Medieval Literature transcends time. The reason it's survived so many years, in so many forms, is that it's highly entertaining, and it speaks to a lot of our deepest desires as humans—the want for adventure, for romance, and to save and be saved.
Deep stuff, we know. But those medieval ladies and gents, they got there first.
The Must-Knows of Medieval English Literature
(1) The Norman Conquest, 1066
Live it, love it, learn it. 1066 is a super important date for English history, because it was when the Norman Conquest happened… which completely changed life in England. Not to mention language in England. The Norman Conquest is what made today's English more Frenchified, and less Old Englishy.
(2) The Black Death
When the Plague came to town around 1348, it killed off an estimated 20%-50% of the population. Hard to wrap your head around the magnitude of that event, isn't it?
(3) Romance
Do us a favor and get the images of those cheesy books you see at the supermarket checkout lane right out of your head. Romance was a completely different animal during the Medieval Period. Actually, it was the most popular genre of secular—you know, non-religious—literature of the time. Everybody read these love stories, not just middle-aged women… and not that there's anything wrong with that.
(4) King Arthur
Medieval authors were total fanboys of King Arthur and his knights. But who isn't? Arthur was a national hero for England. We guess he was sort of like Britain's G.I. Joe, but with a sword.
(5) Authority (auctoritas)
Medieval peeps didn't prize originality in the way us 21st-century folks do. Instead, they were concerned about whether their texts had the appropriate street cred; they wanted every story to have a long history of greatness in the oral tradition, or in some famous bard's or monk's brain. This auctoritas was so important that medieval authors sometimes went so far as to make up sources that didn't exist. To be clear, we strongly advise against fabricating citations for your research papers, kiddos. We doubt your teachers will accept the old, "I'm just imitating medieval authors" excuse.
(6) The Peasants' Uprising
Back then, the peasants were tired of high taxes and the 1% generally sticking it to them. So they rioted in London, and wreaked severe amounts of havoc. Power to the people.
(7) Revenge and Forgiveness
We're getting into some serious seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues territory here, gang. Revenge and forgiveness show up over and over in medieval texts, from Chaucer's pilgrims getting back at each other through their stories, to knights avenging the deaths of their families.
(8) Allegory
Allegory was a popular genre in the Medieval Period. A lot of medieval characters were crafted to represent abstract concepts, like Love, Charity, Faith, and Heinous B.O. (Okay, we might have thrown that last one in there just to make sure you're paying attention.)
(9) Antifeminism
In the medieval period, "well-bred" religious men ruled all. And they usually presented women as shrews or temptresses. Or even shrew-like temptresses. The woman served as the man's foil; medieval women were always out to bring a good man down.
(10) The Church - The Catholic Church was all-powerful during this period. And very visible in daily life, we might add. Everyone was a believer by default, because if you weren't, you could be labeled a heretic—and boy, was that serious business back then.
Thanks: http://www.shmoop.com/medieval-english-literature/
giovedì 19 gennaio 2017
GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
This guide should be most useful right at the start of the course, or later as a resource for exercises in revision, and to help you reflect on value judgements in literary criticism.
Literary forms
Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horror-story, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history of literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider
what constitutes a given form,
how it has developed, and
whether it has a future.
The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with those of Charlotte Brontë, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century, what was ground-breaking in the 1840s? While Brontë examines what is contemporary for her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of interest to the cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia, but not to the student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily describe it as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical context does not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our darkness in considering such questions.
Old English, Middle English and Chaucer
Old English
English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cædmon, Ælfric and King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".)
Middle English and Chaucer
From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman.
Tudor lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets.
Renaissance drama
The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse, which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war.
Metaphysical poetry
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).
Epic poetry
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's Æneid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time.
Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost. The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).
Prose fiction and the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.
After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical views.
Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).
Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism
A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve.
Later Romanticism
The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes, sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental.
Victorian poetry
The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing.
Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).
Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.
The Victorian novel
The rise of the popular novel
In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.
Dickens and the Brontës
Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be acquainted.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Brontë's Wüthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.
The beginnings of American literature
The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Later Victorian novelists
After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-established: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.
Modern literature
Early 20th century poets
W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943).
The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918.
Early modern writers
The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.
Joyce and Woolf
Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of ridicule.
Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).
Poetry in the later 20th century
Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.
Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).
Notable writers outside mainstream movements
Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly regarded by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of Tristram Shandy, R.L. Stevenson (1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author of The Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such as Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), John Galsworthy (1867-1933) and the Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-68) and J.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary merit but for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The American dramatist Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has received similar acclaim for his play Death of a Salesman (1949). Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country, and is familiar to many teachers and students because his work is so often set for study in examinations.
Literature and culture
Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel.
Recent and future trends
In recent times the novel has developed different genres such as the thriller, the whodunnit, the pot-boiler, the western and works of science-fiction, horror and the sex-and-shopping novel. Some of these may be brief fashions (the western seems to be dying) while others such as the detective story or science-fiction have survived for well over a century. As the dominant form of narrative in contemporary western popular culture, the novel may have given way to the feature film and television drama. But it has proved surprisingly resilient. As society alters, so the novel may reflect or define this change; many works may be written, but few of them will fulfil this defining rôle; those which seem to do so now, may not speak to later generations in the same way.
Evaluating literature
The "test of time" may be a cliché, but is a genuine measure of how a work of imagination can transcend cultural boundaries; we should, perhaps, now speak of the "test of time and place", as the best works cross boundaries of both kinds. We may not "like" or "enjoy" works such as Wüthering Heights, Heart of Darkness or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience (or love, or God, or death) while also entertaining or delighting the reader or audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Great Expectations.
Thanks: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa
This guide should be most useful right at the start of the course, or later as a resource for exercises in revision, and to help you reflect on value judgements in literary criticism.
Literary forms
Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horror-story, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history of literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider
what constitutes a given form,
how it has developed, and
whether it has a future.
The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with those of Charlotte Brontë, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century, what was ground-breaking in the 1840s? While Brontë examines what is contemporary for her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of interest to the cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia, but not to the student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily describe it as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical context does not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our darkness in considering such questions.
Old English, Middle English and Chaucer
Old English
English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cædmon, Ælfric and King Alfred) but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".)
Middle English and Chaucer
From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman.
Tudor lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets.
Renaissance drama
The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse, which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war.
Metaphysical poetry
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).
Epic poetry
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's Æneid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time.
Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost. The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).
Prose fiction and the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.
After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical views.
Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).
Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism
A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve.
Later Romanticism
The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes, sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental.
Victorian poetry
The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing.
Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).
Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.
The Victorian novel
The rise of the popular novel
In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.
Dickens and the Brontës
Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be acquainted.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Brontë's Wüthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.
The beginnings of American literature
The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92) and Emily Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Later Victorian novelists
After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-established: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.
Modern literature
Early 20th century poets
W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943).
The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918.
Early modern writers
The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.
Joyce and Woolf
Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of ridicule.
Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).
Poetry in the later 20th century
Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.
Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).
Notable writers outside mainstream movements
Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly regarded by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of Tristram Shandy, R.L. Stevenson (1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author of The Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such as Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), John Galsworthy (1867-1933) and the Americans F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-68) and J.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary merit but for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The American dramatist Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has received similar acclaim for his play Death of a Salesman (1949). Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country, and is familiar to many teachers and students because his work is so often set for study in examinations.
Literature and culture
Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel.
Recent and future trends
In recent times the novel has developed different genres such as the thriller, the whodunnit, the pot-boiler, the western and works of science-fiction, horror and the sex-and-shopping novel. Some of these may be brief fashions (the western seems to be dying) while others such as the detective story or science-fiction have survived for well over a century. As the dominant form of narrative in contemporary western popular culture, the novel may have given way to the feature film and television drama. But it has proved surprisingly resilient. As society alters, so the novel may reflect or define this change; many works may be written, but few of them will fulfil this defining rôle; those which seem to do so now, may not speak to later generations in the same way.
Evaluating literature
The "test of time" may be a cliché, but is a genuine measure of how a work of imagination can transcend cultural boundaries; we should, perhaps, now speak of the "test of time and place", as the best works cross boundaries of both kinds. We may not "like" or "enjoy" works such as Wüthering Heights, Heart of Darkness or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience (or love, or God, or death) while also entertaining or delighting the reader or audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Great Expectations.
Thanks: http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa
THE VICTORIAN AGE - IN DEPTH PANORAMA
The Victorian Age - A LITERARY PANORAMA
The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the middle class the political power it needed to consolidate—and to hold—the economic position it had already achieved. Industry and commerce burgeoned. While the affluence of the middle class increased, the lower classes, thrown off their land and into the cities to form the great urban working class, lived ever more wretchedly. The social changes were so swift and brutal that Godwinian utopianism rapidly gave way to attempts either to justify the new economic and urban conditions, or to change them. The intellectuals and artists of the age had to deal in some way with the upheavals in society, the obvious inequities of abundance for a few and squalor for many, and, emanating from the throne of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), an emphasis on public rectitude and moral propriety.
The Novel
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes. William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's (see Brontë, family) single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways. The novels of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) appeared during the 1860s and 70s. A woman of great erudition and moral fervor, Eliot was concerned with ethical conflicts and social problems. George Meredith produced comic novels noted for their psychological perception. Another novelist of the late 19th cent. was the prolific Anthony Trollope, famous for sequences of related novels that explore social, ecclesiastical, and political life in England.
Thomas Hardy's profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland county he called Wessex. Samuel Butler produced novels satirizing the Victorian ethos, and Robert Louis Stevenson, a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction and children's verse. The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll, produced the complex and sophisticated children's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Lesser novelists of considerable merit include Benjamin Disraeli, George Gissing, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.
Nonfiction
Among the Victorian masters of nonfiction were the great Whig historian Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, the historian, social critic, and prophet whose rhetoric thundered through the age. Influential thinkers included John Stuart Mill, the great liberal scholar and philosopher; Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and popularizer of Darwinian theory; and John Henry, Cardinal Newman, who wrote earnestly of religion, philosophy, and education. The founders of Communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, researched and wrote their books in the free environment of England. The great art historian and critic John Ruskin also concerned himself with social and economic problems. Matthew Arnold's theories of literature and culture laid the foundations for modern literary criticism, and his poetry is also notable.
Poetry
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although romantic in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues. Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the soldiers of British expansion. Some fine religious poetry was produced by Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, Christina Rossetti, and Lionel Johnson.
In the middle of the 19th cent. the so-called Pre-Raphaelites, led by the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to revive what they judged to be the simple, natural values and techniques of medieval life and art. Their quest for a rich symbolic art led them away, however, from the mainstream. William Morris—designer, inventor, printer, poet, and social philosopher—was the most versatile of the group, which included the poets Christina Rossetti and Coventry Patmore.
Algernon Charles Swinburne began as a Pre-Raphaelite but soon developed his own classically influenced, sometimes florid style. A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy, Victorian figures who lived on into the 20th cent., share a pessimistic view in their poetry, but Housman's well-constructed verse is rather more superficial. The great innovator among the late Victorian poets was the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. The concentration and originality of his imagery, as well as his jolting meter ("sprung rhythm"), had a profound effect on 20th-century poetry.
During the 1890s the most conspicuous figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde. The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty comedies of Oscar Wilde and the comic operettas of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements of 19th-century British drama.
The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the middle class the political power it needed to consolidate—and to hold—the economic position it had already achieved. Industry and commerce burgeoned. While the affluence of the middle class increased, the lower classes, thrown off their land and into the cities to form the great urban working class, lived ever more wretchedly. The social changes were so swift and brutal that Godwinian utopianism rapidly gave way to attempts either to justify the new economic and urban conditions, or to change them. The intellectuals and artists of the age had to deal in some way with the upheavals in society, the obvious inequities of abundance for a few and squalor for many, and, emanating from the throne of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), an emphasis on public rectitude and moral propriety.
The Novel
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes. William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's (see Brontë, family) single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways. The novels of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) appeared during the 1860s and 70s. A woman of great erudition and moral fervor, Eliot was concerned with ethical conflicts and social problems. George Meredith produced comic novels noted for their psychological perception. Another novelist of the late 19th cent. was the prolific Anthony Trollope, famous for sequences of related novels that explore social, ecclesiastical, and political life in England.
Thomas Hardy's profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland county he called Wessex. Samuel Butler produced novels satirizing the Victorian ethos, and Robert Louis Stevenson, a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction and children's verse. The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll, produced the complex and sophisticated children's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Lesser novelists of considerable merit include Benjamin Disraeli, George Gissing, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.
Nonfiction
Among the Victorian masters of nonfiction were the great Whig historian Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, the historian, social critic, and prophet whose rhetoric thundered through the age. Influential thinkers included John Stuart Mill, the great liberal scholar and philosopher; Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and popularizer of Darwinian theory; and John Henry, Cardinal Newman, who wrote earnestly of religion, philosophy, and education. The founders of Communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, researched and wrote their books in the free environment of England. The great art historian and critic John Ruskin also concerned himself with social and economic problems. Matthew Arnold's theories of literature and culture laid the foundations for modern literary criticism, and his poetry is also notable.
Poetry
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although romantic in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues. Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the soldiers of British expansion. Some fine religious poetry was produced by Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, Christina Rossetti, and Lionel Johnson.
In the middle of the 19th cent. the so-called Pre-Raphaelites, led by the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to revive what they judged to be the simple, natural values and techniques of medieval life and art. Their quest for a rich symbolic art led them away, however, from the mainstream. William Morris—designer, inventor, printer, poet, and social philosopher—was the most versatile of the group, which included the poets Christina Rossetti and Coventry Patmore.
Algernon Charles Swinburne began as a Pre-Raphaelite but soon developed his own classically influenced, sometimes florid style. A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy, Victorian figures who lived on into the 20th cent., share a pessimistic view in their poetry, but Housman's well-constructed verse is rather more superficial. The great innovator among the late Victorian poets was the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. The concentration and originality of his imagery, as well as his jolting meter ("sprung rhythm"), had a profound effect on 20th-century poetry.
During the 1890s the most conspicuous figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde. The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty comedies of Oscar Wilde and the comic operettas of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements of 19th-century British drama.
YEAR IV AND V - LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, author of JANE EYRE
LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, author of JANE EYRE
At age twenty, Charlotte Brontë sent a sample of her poetry to England's Poet Laureate, Robert Southey. His comments urged her to abandon all literary pursuits: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation." His response indicates the political difficulties women faced as they tried to enter the literary arena in Victorian England; domestic responsibilities were expected to require all their energy, leaving no time for creative pursuits. Despite a lack of support from the outside world, Charlotte Brontë found sufficient internal motivation and enthusiasm from her sisters to become a successful writer and balance her familial and creative needs.
Born at Thornton, Yorkshire on April 21, 1816, Charlotte was the third child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. In 1820, her father received a curate post in Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors, where Charlotte spent most of her life. In 1821, Mrs. Brontë died from what was thought to be cancer. Charlotte and her four sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Anne, and their brother, Branwell, were raised primarily by their unpleasant, maiden aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, who provided them with little supervision. Not only were the children free to roam the moors, but their father allowed them to read whatever interested them: Shakespeare, The Arabian Nights, Pilgrim's Progress, and the poems of Byron were some of their favorites.
When a school for the daughters of poor clergymen opened at Cowan Bridge in 1824, Mr. Brontë decided to send his oldest four daughters there to receive a formal education. Most biographers argue that Charlotte's description of Lowood School in Jane Eyre accurately reflects the dismal conditions at this school. Charlotte's two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in 1824 of tuberculosis they contracted due to the poor management of the school. Following this tragedy, Patrick Brontë withdrew Charlotte and Emily from Cowan Bridge.
Grieving over their sisters' deaths and searching for a way to alleviate their loneliness, the remaining four siblings began writing a series of stories, The Glass-Town, stimulated by a set of toy soldiers their father had given them. In these early writings, the children collaboratively created a complete imaginary world, a fictional West African empire they called Angria. Charlotte explained their interest in writing this way: "We were wholly dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had know from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary composition." Through her early twenties, Charlotte routinely revised and expanded pieces of the Angria story, developing several key characters and settings. While this writing helped Charlotte improve her literary style, the Angria adventures are fantastical, melodramatic, and repetitive, contrasting with Charlotte's more realistic adult fiction.
After her father had a dangerous lung disorder, he decided once again that his daughters should receive an education so they would be assured of an income if he died. In 1831, Charlotte entered the Misses Wooler's school at Roe Head. Shy and solitary, Charlotte was not happy at school, but she still managed to win several academic awards and to make two lifelong friends: Mary Taylor and Ellen Nussey. Although she was offered a teaching job at Roe Head, Charlotte declined the position, choosing to return to Haworth instead. Perhaps bored with the solitary life at Haworth and looking for an active occupation in the world, Charlotte returned to Roe Head in 1835 as a governess. For her, governessing was akin to "slavery," because she felt temperamentally unsuited for it, and finally, following a near mental breakdown in 1838, she was forced to resign her position. Unfortunately, governessing was the only real employment opportunity middle-class women had in Victorian England. Because the family needed the money, Charlotte suffered through two more unhappy governess positions, feeling like an unappreciated servant in wealthy families' homes; she didn't enjoy living in other people's houses because it caused "estrangement from one's real character."
In an attempt to create a job that would allow her to maintain her independence, Charlotte formed the idea of starting her own school at Haworth. To increase her teaching qualifications before beginning this venture, she enrolled as a student, at the age of twenty-six, at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels so she could increase her fluency in French and learn German. Charlotte loved the freedom and adventure of living in a new culture, and formed an intense, though one-sided, passion for the married headmaster at the school: Monsieur Heger. After two years in Brussels, suffering perhaps from her love for Heger, Charlotte returned to England. The plan to open her own school was a failure, as she was unable to attract a single student.
Instead, Charlotte began putting all of her energy into her writing. After discovering Emily's poems, Charlotte decided that she, Anne, and Emily should try to publish a collection of poems at their own expense. In 1846, they accomplished this goal, using the masculine pseudonyms of Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell because of the double standards against women authors. Although their book, Poems, was not a financial success, the women continued their literary endeavors. Excited to be writing full-time, they each began a novel. Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights both found publishers, but Charlotte's somewhat autobiographical account of her experiences in Brussels, The Professor, was rejected by several publishers. Again refusing to become discouraged, Charlotte began writing Jane Eyre in 1846, while on a trip to Manchester with her father where he was undergoing cataract surgery. While he convalesced, Charlotte wrote. The firm of Smith, Elder, and Company agreed to publish the resulting novel, and the first edition of Jane Eyre was released on October 16, 1847. The novel was an instant success, launching Charlotte into literary fame. It also netted her an impressive 500 pounds, twenty-five times her salary as a governess.
But the pleasures of literary success were soon overshadowed by family tragedy. In 1848, after Anne and Charlotte had revealed the true identity of the "Bells" to their publishers, their brother Branwell died. Never living up to his family's high expectations for him, Branwell died an opium-addicted, debauched, alcoholic failure. Emily and Anne died soon after. Although Charlotte completed her second novel, Shirley in 1849, her sadness at the loss of her remaining siblings left her emotionally shattered. She became a respected member of the literary community only when her sisters, her most enthusiastic supporters, were no longer able to share her victory. Visiting London following the publication of this book, Charlotte became acquainted with several important writers, including William Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell, who was to write Charlotte's biography following her death.
In 1852, the Reverend Arthur B. Nicholls, Mr. Brontë's curate at Haworth beginning in 1845, proposed marriage to Charlotte. Earlier in her life, Charlotte had rejected several marriage proposals because she was hoping to discover true love, but loneliness following the death of her last three siblings may have led her to accept Nicholls' proposal. Saying she had "esteem" but not love for Nicholls, Charlotte's relationship with her husband was certainly not the overwhelming passion of Jane and Rochester. Her father's jealous opposition to the marriage led Charlotte initially to reject Nicholls, who left Haworth in 1853, the year Villette was published. By 1854, Reverend Brontë's opposition to the union had abated somewhat, and the ceremony was performed on June 29, 1854. After the marriage, Charlotte had little time for writing, as she was forced to perform the duties expected of a minister's wife and take care of her aging father. In 1854 Charlotte, in the early stages of pregnancy, caught pneumonia while on a long, rain-drenched walk on the moors. She died on March 31, 1855, a month before her thirty-ninth birthday. The Professor, written in 1846 and 1847, was posthumously published in 1857, along with Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë.
JANE EYRE QUICK NOTES
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre opens with Jane, an orphaned, isolated ten-year-old, living with a family that dislikes her. She grows in strength, excels at school, becomes a governess, and falls in love with Edward Rochester. After being deceived by him, Jane goes to Marsh End, where she regains her spirituality and discovers her own strength. By novel's end, Jane is a strong, independent woman. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre still raises relevant questions to readers today.
Written by: Charlotte Brontë
Type of Work: novel
Genres: gothic; Victorian; romance; bildungsroman (coming of age novel
First Published: 1847
Setting: English countryside, 1800s
Main Characters: Jane Eyre; Edward Fairfax Rochester; St. John Rivers
Major Thematic Topics: class conflict; gender conflict; courtship; mythic; spirituality; family
Motifs: rebellion; substitute mothers; Byronic hero
Major Symbols: Thornfield burning; the red room
Here are eight important things to remember about Jane Eyre:
- Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Other examples of this form include Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Jane Eyre is a typical coming-of-age novel in that its main character, Jane, is young, brave, and resourceful in the face of difficulty and even danger. As a result, she is easy for readers to sympathize with. The phrase "coming-of-age" literally means the character is maturing and coming closer to adulthood.
- Jane Eyre is a gothic novel. Gothic novels focus on the mysterious; take place in dark, sometimes exotic, settings (often houses that appear to be haunted); but still entail an element of romance. The double is a frequent feature of the Gothic novel, and in a sense Jane and the madwoman in Rochester's attic are doubles — two wives, one of sound mind and the other insane.
- The most famous line in Jane Eyre is "Reader, I married him." This line is significant not only in that it provides the novel with a happy ending, but also because of its active quality, which was probably shocking at the time of the novel's publication. The line "Reader, he married me." would have been more conventional.
- St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester are foils — meaning opposites — of one another, especially in relation to Jane. St. John is cold and dispassionate, while Mr. Rochester is wildly indulgent and passionate. Even their physiques are a foil. Mr. Rochester is not handsome, but he does have extremely masculine features. On the other hand, St. John is classically beautiful. At one point he's described as Athenian, which recalls a grandiose statue to mind.
- Jane Eyre is rebellious in a world demanding obedient women. In her own way, Jane rebels against Mrs. Reed, St. John Rivers, and even Mr. Rochester, the man she marries at the end of the book. Jane's personality contains many qualities that would be considered desirable in an English woman; she's frank, sincere, and lacks personal vanity. But the rebel streak she has is targeted at "inequalities of society." Jane reacts strongly when she is discredited due to her class and/or gender.
- One primary theme is class conflict. Although English society has a very strict hierarchy, moments throughout Jane Eyre reveal those lines being blurred.
- Gender conflict is a theme that threads throughout Jane Eyre. Time and again, Jane is vulnerable to a patriarchal class system that doesn't always have her best interest in mind.
- A major symbol in Jane Eyre is that of Thornfield burning. Prior to meeting Jane, Mr. Rochester is impulsive and wild. He wants to change and tries to use Jane's purity to help motivate his transformation. Even with Jane's influence, Mr. Rochester can't change. It's not until Thornfield burns down and Mr. Rochester loses his hand and sight that he is able to change. Symbolically, it's as if his lies and passions have finally exploded. Now, Mr. Rochester can change, with the help of Jane, and be the perfect husband.
Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs.
Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.
After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.
The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield.
Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives.
St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him—as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary.
At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth.
Literary Anlysis of Jane Eyre
Many themes, styles, genres, and
modes of Victorian Literature are reflected in the works of the Bronte
Sisters', especially that of Jane Eyre. Common
Jane Eyre is written in first-person from the point of view of Jane. The genre of Jane Eyre can
be classified as many different types; Romance, Mystery, and Gothic
Fiction. It can be considered a classic romantic novel because of the
passionate relationship that Jane and Rochester form. It is a mystery in
the sense that throughout the book, Jane suspects something about
Rochester and his past based on the incident of Grace Pool accidently
setting his bed on fire in a drunken state and not getting fired for it.
She then discovers the secret of his past that he has a wife, Bertha,
who has one mad and was the one who set his bed on fire. It is
considered Gothic Fiction because of the supernatural and fantasy
elements that Charlotte Bronte includes
(http://www.shmoop.com/jane-eyre/literary-devices.html) Through
Charlotte's unique writing style, she incorporates "fantasy elements in Jane Eyre through
references to fairy tales, prophetic dreams, mythic imagery, and
extraordinary plot twists," (Shwingen). An example of the mythic imagery
is shown through Charlotte's emphasis on the image of passion.
Jane was always a passionate and emotional character since she was a
child. Charlotte writes about Jane after her cousin hits her with the
book, "my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still
bracing me with its bitter vigor." The image of her warm blood and her
intense anger compared to that of a revolted slave shows Jane's great
emotion even as a child. This image is emphasized through imagery when
Charlotte writes of Jane's feelings for Rochester as "fiery iron" and
"blackness and burning". These figurative images of a fire portray to
the reader the intense passion that Jane has for Rochester. Fire is
another image that Charlotte writes about throughout the novel; "in the
bedroom blaze which
Jane saved Rochester from, in the language that both Rochester and Jane
use in describing their emotions towards each other, and in the final
fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall, crippled Rochester, and killed
Bertha," (Vaughon). In
Vaughon's opinion, this imagery of fire and passion was Charlotte's way
of emphasizing the unethical and sinful love that Jane and Rochester
shared with each other based on the fire of hell. As said before, in
Victorian times, this relationship would be considered scandalous not
only based on the difference in their classes, but also because they
believed in purity. Charlotte goes against the traditional beliefs with
her imagery of passion and lust between Jane and Rochester.
Charlotte's writing style is generally educated, complex, and emotion
filled. Most of her sentences are contain numerous adjectives and
sensual images. Her unique style may be overwhelming for some readers,
but it's powerful and strong. The reader is able to identify with Jane
Eyre as a character through the complex sentence structure that is
filled with emotion and imagery. (http://reviewmaterials.tripod.com/english/jane_eyre.html)
Each setting of
the book has it's own unique mood in strong relation to the characters present
at each place. For example,Robert B. Martin points out that the setting of
Thornfield is much more personal than the two preceding settings at Gateshead
and Lowood because of the connection Jane makes to Rochester
and the connection Rochester
has to Thornfield (George P. Landow). In chapter 11, Mrs. Fairfax first makes
mention to Rochester
when she says, "Great
houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor". Because
Mrs. Fairfax said this, Jane felt as though it was not alive unless Rochester was present
which is strongly connected to how Jane felt lonely and down because when he
was not there. This connection between character and setting reflects the
complex mood of Thornfield depending on whether Rochester is there or not. When he is away on
a trip, the mood is somber and desolate because the reader can understand and
feel the longing that Jane has for Rochester
and the loneliness she feels in the huge, empty house. When he is there, the
mood changes to exciting and intimate because of the strong feelings that Jane
has toward him and the liveliness that she associates with the house.
Charlotte Bronte does a great job with reflecting the characters in Jane
Eyre to the reader through her writing. One very unique and
interesting character is Bertha, Rochester's
insane wife. The Victorians during the nineteenth century had a fascination
with health, sometimes greater than that of politics, religion, and Darwinism.
They believed "an interdependent mind-body connection gained
strength, and many people saw physical and mental health as being interrelated
rather than separate entities," (Sonja Mayer). According to Mayer, these
attitudes of the time are reflected in Bertha's character through her mental
illness and the physical threat she puts on Rochester. Compared to Jane, Bertha is her
opposite and portrayed to the reader as a monster. Rochester "describes
her as having 'red balls' for eyes, a 'mask' instead of a face, and 'bulk'
instead of an attractive form like Jane," (Sonja Mayer). Jane is
strong in body and mind. She endured the unhealthy conditions at Lowood where
many students had died and survived through cold and hunger when she had ran
away from Thornfield and lived outside. Her mental strength is shown through
her courage as a child with her evil aunt, bullying cousin, and hypocritical
head master. She stayed true to herself and motivated to be successful as a
woman in this time despite the difficult situations these people had created
for her. In contrast, Bertha is portrayed by Rochester as having "gone mad". The
Victorians would view this as a lack of mental strength. She, also, poses a
threat to Rochester physically by her acts such as setting his bed on fire
while he was sleeping, lunging at him and Jane in the room, and actually
succeeding in burning down the house at the the end of the book.
The character of Jane isn't the traditional heroine of the time. In
many romantic novels of the Victorian era, the heroine was beautiful.
Jane is described by Charlotte as "simple and plain". She also differs
from the traditional heroine in her strength as a woman. Charlotte
created a woman character that was equal to the male character. Jane is
not equal in status or class, but in emotional strength and maturity.
This went against society's beliefs of the time because Victorians
traditionally believed that women were not capable of strong emotions.
LITERARY ANALYSIS TAKEN FROM: https://sites.google.com/a/cheshire.k12.ct.us/victorian-era/influential-authors/the-bronte-sisters/biography/jane-eyre-analysis/literary-anlysis-of-jane-eyre
Thanks to SPARKNOTES for the plot summary
LITERARY ANALYSIS TAKEN FROM: https://sites.google.com/a/cheshire.k12.ct.us/victorian-era/influential-authors/the-bronte-sisters/biography/jane-eyre-analysis/literary-anlysis-of-jane-eyre
Thanks to SPARKNOTES for the plot summary
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