Matthew Arnold
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 444.
William Morris
- student of John Ruskin
- student of the history of art, painter, influenced by Ruskin
- novel “News from Nowhere”, ‘nowhere'- a marker of utopia, communist utopia (England- village without industrial revolution)
- interested in design: furniture, wallpapers, cutlery, book cover design, etc
- poet, literary critic
- by profession school inspector
- didn't believe in God; read the Bible as piece of literature (liked it)
- poetry can change the world (the Bible is an example)
- reading literature gives basics for educations; literature offers you a lot of things, kind of knowledge that changes people
- critical of Victorian times
WYKŁAD 9
VICTORIAN NOVEL
- great time for the novel- dominating genre
- preference for fiction & novelà social explanation:
- 19th century – century of middle class (more rights, privileges)
novel- a mirror of middle class
- connecting novel with the trends in philosophy (John Locke- a philosopher, pragmatism)
- realistic novel (no fantastic!)
- women's writing becomes treated more seriously
Requirements of the Victorian novel:
- moralistic
- entertaining
- reflective of the image of a given class
- realism
- novels were for everybody as each person could understand it
- explosion of all kinds of writing
- at the end of Victorian Age, novel is almost dead
- different types of novel appears:
* report (Robinson Crusoe)
* epistolary
bildungsroman novel
social novel:
· “the condition of England' novel
· “slice of life” novel (representative of the sample of life- small group of characters and you observe them for a month, a year, etc; type of novel of manners)
adventure stories
· Robert L. Stevenson “Kidnapped”, “Treasure Island”
horror stories
· Bram Stoker“Dracula”
~~ gradual evolution of novel in many senses~~
1) the form- 1st Victorian novel are episodic, title- sketches from life, one is hardly connected
to another; late Victorian- tight, precisely- organized novels, unity, organic,
everything makes sense
2) construction of novel- early novels: plot + dialogues, very simple
late period: more descriptions; rhetorical figures, need
interpretation, not black & white situations, requires a more
demanding reader ready to think, work on that
EARLY PERIOD: LATE PERIOD:
Dickens G.Elliot(allegory, symbolic scenes, essays)
Thackeray Th. Hardy (allegory, symbolic scenes)
* openly says who is good, * ambivalent characters, no black & white situations
who is not in a story
3) the role of the reader
early: late:
novels for everyone novel which requires more demanding,
prepared reader, more ambitious and
discriminating
for emotions, ask to sympathize, requires more intellectual work;
like or dislike elevation of the status
(some part of the audience is lost)
WYKŁAD 10
VICTORIAN POETRY
*poetry still respected, but less read, loses position of dominating genre
Poets of the older generation:
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