19th century British this time.

19th Century British (10)
1) Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen .
2) Frankenstein, Mary Shelly .
3) On Liberty, John Stuart Mill .
4) Vanity Fair, William Thackery .
5) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte .
6) Middlemarch, George Eliot .
7) The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde .
8) Dracula, Bram Stoker .
9) Songs of Innocence & …, Blake .
10) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte .

The beginnings of Romanticism, roughly 1785-1830’s. Due to increased urbanism there was a conscious choice to turn to nature imagery. The French Revolution occurred at the end of the 18th century and increased the push towards emotionalism and introspection. The Victorian period ran roughly 1837-1901 so greatly influenced writing. Dickens, Austen, Brontes, and Hardy are some of the best to think of for this period. The novel became the leading form of literature as a growing mass of middle class readers appeared. There was a fair bit of focus on social status with little thought to social mobility. There was still a strong sense of behavior being a result of “breeding.”
Towards the end of the century “nonsense” verse appeared such as by Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll—the precursor of surrealism.

Romantic poetry tends towards nature (somehow different from pastoral) images and slightly less formulaic structure. There was an increased belief that poetry should be more spontaneous and less the result of dogged work. There was disdain towards former nature poets who had not paid enough attention nor described well enough their subject. It was almost description for its own sake. Major poets include: Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats and Coleridge. (Coleridge: Frost at Midnight. Neat poem) The Romantic era poets ascribed the same sorts of feelings to nature as had previously been primarily ascribed to God though occasionally to parents. Nature is being used to represent something bigger and grander than itself. Symbolism was very important (isn’t it always?). It was declared that Wordsworth did to poetry what the French Revolution did to politics. There was a conscious glorification of the commonplace. Some referred to a medieval revival characterized by adapting old forms of ballad and romance to modern sophisticated use and establishing medieval settings for events that violate our sense of realism and the natural order (Coleridge was into this). Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge all explored visionary states of consciousness that are common among children but violate the standard categories of adult judgment. They also studied the occult and hypnotism. They may have been more than a little addicted to opium. This period also stressed an unprecedented amount of individuality. Infinite longing was a theme of the era. Being alone due to having rejected society, or by being rejected, was a frequent theme and most authors harped on it constantly.
There was an extreme focus on the French Revolution as a sign of the Apocalypse and when that didn’t quite work out they switched their focus instead to believing that the “new earth and new heaven” is available to us here and now on earth; thus there are many mentions of a new way of seeing. The apocalypse is not about a change in the world, it is about a change in how we see the world. Austen was one of the most significant novelists of the period.

Victorian 1837-1901. (The reign of the queen.) This period of English history saw more change than the previous 2000 years. The people of the era were usually torn between being happy about the change and growth and feeling like they were losing something significant, which they were. There was no longer the traditional foci in life. Can be described as a sense of being displaced. Most writers of this period had a tremendous amount of vitality and energy. The period should rightly be divided into Early Victorian 1830-48, Mid-Victorian 1848-70 and Late Victorian 1870-1901.
Early: the first steps towards universal suffrage taken along with the opening of a vast railway system. (Men who owned more than 10 lbs worth of property could vote.)
The early 1840’s were called the Time of Troubles due to a severe depression with widespread unemployment that lead to rioting. (1843 poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Cry of the Children http://www.bartleby.com/246/260.html)
Mid: called The Age of Improvement. A very complacent, easy time to be British. This is the period most actually think of when they think of “Victorian.” Dickens is still writing critical stuff along with a few others but by and large people are content. This period was politically dominated by two philosophies: the Utilitarians and the anti-Utilitarians (who were either very traditionally religious or who abandoned traditional religion while seeking to maintain the strong sense of belief). “Higher Criticism” erupted which was criticism of the Bible. Geology, biology and astrology exploded the amount of information in existence. Folks started to feel very small in terms of history and the cosmos.
1859: Darwin published
Late: 1880’s spurred the “Irish Question” regarding home rule. This period also saw a drastic decline in prosperity due to a variety of factors including increased food importation from the US and military saber rattling from Germany. The 1870’s saw a huge amount of emigration. Socialism appeared on the scene. The attitude shifted away from the “I can fix anything” attitude present in the Mid period towards more hopelessness and anger.
1890’s: Kipling is one of the writers recording the experiences at the frontier; the frontier was more like the prosperous mid-vic period than the turbulence happening in London. There was a degeneration of ‘values’ and focus on the end of the century in bleakness.

The Romantic poet most influential in the Victorian age was Keats, the most form-conscious of the Romantics. The Victorians made a conscious effort to return to more strict stylistic concerns rejecting the loosening of the reigns made in previous decades. There was a lot of focus on earnestness, respectability, and the evangelism. People were confused about principles of morals and sexuality. Liberty was both idealized and viewed skeptically (On Liberty).
Women working in factories and other physically demanding jobs lead to more questioning of the idea of the woman’s sphere. These changes brought to the fore what the Victorians called the “Woman Question,” which concerned issues of sexual inequality in politics, economic life, education, and social intercourse. There was a tremendous surplus of women who had almost no access to interesting employment. The only respectable real employment available to middle class women was to be a governess—think Jane Eyre or Vanity Fair. It is widely considered impossible to identify distinguishing stylistic characteristics of the writing of this period as it is too diverse. There is a similarity in temper or state of mind; they are quite earnest in response to the expanding horizons of nineteenth century life. There are also some recurring subjects: preoccupation with humanity’s relationship to God and an acute awareness of time, past, present, and future. Another big one is love.

Dickens was big earlier in the period, Hardy published late in the period. Novelists were more worried about the relationships between people rather than the relationship with God.

Writers of the Georgian period (1911-36) believed that Victorians were overly stuffy prigs. They tended to feel completely overshadowed by the exuberance of energy of the Victorians.

I still need to cover 20th century British, review more poems (I am getting close on this one, I have good Romantic and Victorian British 20th Century and good poems for 19th and 20th century America), look over the world lit stuff again, and review criticism again though I’m rather comfortable with it.