Victorian Era

VICTORIAN AGE

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

group 8

Ilmiyatin

Noor Amalia Utami (125110100111052)

Sarah Andiyani Putri (125110100111056)

Murtiningsih (125110100111060)

Edwin Aditya Nugraha (125110100111065)

Viki Leli Lenggraeni (125110100111069)

Contents

Introduction  

•      Victorian literature is that produced during the reign of Queen Victoria.

•      The Victorians have been called “Earnest” and “Eminent”.

•      The central characteristic of this era was their constant concern with propriety and virtue.

Features of life

•      Its morality

•      The revolt

•      Intellectual Development

•      The new education

•      International Influences

The growth of language

•      The using of suffix –ize.

•      The heavy and formal of conversation style .

•      The improved standardization of English language.

•      New styles of pronunciation (effect of the expansion of immigrant).

The writers and works

•      Thomas Henry Huxley

•      Alfred Lord Tennyson

•      Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning

•      Charles Dickens

INTRODUCTION

Victorian literature is that produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) or the Victorian era. The period has been regarded as one of the most glorious in English History. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century.

The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created a legacy of works with continuing appeal. Many novels were published in serial form, along with short stories and poetry, in such literary magazines as Household Words.

The Victorian era was an important time for the development of science and the Victorians had a mission to describe and classify the entire natural world. Much of this writing does not rise to the level of being regarded as literature but one book in particular, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, remains famous. The theory of evolution contained within the work shook many of the ideas the Victorians had about themselves and their place in the world. Although it took a long time to be widely accepted, it would dramatically change subsequent thought and literature.

The word Victorian has come to be used to describe a set of moral and sexual values. The Victorians were great moraliser, probably because they faced numerous problems on such a scale that they felt obliged to advocate certain values which offered solution or escape. As a rule the values they promoted reflected not the world as they saw it the harsh social reality around them, but the world as they would have like it to be.

FEATURES OF LIFE

1.  Its Morality

2.  The Revolt

3.  Intellectual Development

The literary product was inevitably affected by the new ideas in science, religion, and politics.

In science, the development began with the discovery of the facts of bacteriology about 1860, and the use of antiseptics fifteen years later, and not much earlier began the effective opposition to the frightful epidemics which had formerly been supposed to be dependent only on the will of Providence.

For political and social progress, was substantial. In 1830 England, nominally a monarchy, was in reality a plutocracy of about a hundred thousand men--landed nobles, gentry, and wealthy merchants--whose privileges dated back to fifteenth century conditions. The first Reform Bill, of 1832, forced on Parliament by popular pressure, extended the right of voting to men of the 'middle class,' and the subsequent bills of 1867 and 1885 made it universal for men. Meanwhile the House of Commons slowly asserted itself against the hereditary House of Lords, and thus England became perhaps the most truly democratic of the great nations of the world. And there was a poverty named “Corn Laws” to lowering the price of food when this age was in great hunger

In religion, the ‘Oxford Movement’ which asserted the supreme authority of the Church and its traditional doctrines. The most important figure in this movement, who connects it definitely with literature, was John Henry Newman (1801-90), author of the hymn 'Lead, Kindly Light,' a man of winning personality and great literary skill. For fifteen years, as vicar of the Oxford University Church, Newman was a great spiritual force in the English communion, but the series of 'Tracts for the Times' to which he largely contributed, ending in 1841 in the famous Tract 90, tell the story of his gradual progress toward Rome. Thereafter as an avowed Roman Catholic and head of a monastic establishment Newman showed himself a formidable controversialist, especially in a literary encounter with the clergyman-novelist Charles Kingsley which led to Newman's famous 'Apologia pro Vita Sua' (Apology for My Life), one of the secondary literary masterpieces of the century. His services to the Catholic Church were recognized in 1879 by his appointment as a Cardinal.

4.  The New Education

The government “introducing” the acts for youth in UK. The acts named The Education Acts. What is it? The Education Acts is a series of laws that has been laid down to better improve education.

Promoted by reformers (William Edward Forster), education act as the key to keeping Britain competitive in the industrializing world, radical legislation in the second half of the 19th century transformed the lives of working-class children. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 established formal education for children aged five to 12 in England and Wales, with subsequent laws making elementary education compulsory in 1880 and free of charge in 1891. School boards needed new school facilities that not only held large numbers of students, but also produced healthy workers and acted as a positive aesthetic and cultural asset for the communities that they served. Between 1870 and 1902 the London School Board alone opened over 400 new schools.

Because there is a new education system introduce in this age, there are opportunities for everyone at that time to have a formal education like a nobel or middle class. That is why there are a lot of raising scientics come in this era and show the new point of view about world that lead to enlightened.

5. International Influences

During the nineteenth century the interaction among American and European writers was remarkably fresh and strong. In Britain the influence of the great German writers was continuous, and it was championed by Carlyle and Matthew Arnold.

.International influences begin to influence the literature at the end of the century but the influences from English literature to America is started from the beginning of the interaction of both nation. This interaction of both countries cause a new accent and vocabularies.

In this age, the Writers from the United States and the British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada were influenced by the literature of Britain and are often classed as a part of Victorian literature, although they were gradually developing their own distinctive voices. Victorian writers of Canadian literature include Grant Allen, Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill. Australian literature has the poets Adam Lindsay Gordon and Banjo Paterson, who wrote Waltzing Matilda and New Zealand literature includes Thomas Bracken and Frederick Edward Maning. From the sphere of literature of the United States during this time are some of the country's greats including: Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry James, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman

THE WRITERS AND WORKS

•      Thomas Henry Huxley

•      Alfred Lord Tennyson

•      Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning

•      Charles Dickens

ROBERT BROWNING(1812-1889) AND ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING (1806-1861)

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

Robert Browning is naturally considered a Victorian poet, considering that he wrote during the time period of Victorian England. And yet  Browning's  work is simultaneously a revolt against some of the most well-defined aspects of that time, and a reflection of its characteristics.

These early works were not read, were not even criticized; and it was not till 1846 that Browning became famous, not because of his books but because he eloped with Elizabeth Barrett, who was then the most popular poet in England . Nearly all the works of Browning are dramatic in spirit, and are commonly dramatic also in form. The first Robert Browning  published works, Pauline and Paracelsus.

Pauline was an itrospective poem, which shows very strongly the influence of Shelley, whom at this period , browning held in great reverence.

Paracelcuss was the story of the hero’s unquenchable thirst  for that breadth of knowledge which is beyond the graps of one man, brings to the  fore browning’s  predominant ideas-that  a life without love must be a failure and that God is working all things to an end beyond human divining.

Besides it, there are least two ways in which Browning’s work differs from that of other dramatists. When a trained playwright produces a drama his rule is, “Action, more action, and still more action.” Moreover, he stands aside in order to permit his characters to reveal their quality by their own speech or action. For example, Shakespeare’s plays are filled with movement, and he never tells you what he thinks of Portia or Rosalind or Macbeth, or what ought to become of them. He does not need to tell. But Browning often halts his story to inform you how this or that situation should be met, or what must come out of it. His theory is that it is not action but thought which determines human character

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861).

Among the lesser poets of the age the most famous was Elizabeth Barrett, who eloped in romantic fashion with Browning in 1846. She had written since she was child. She was educated at home, studying Latin and Greek and love reading since childhood. When she was 14 years old, she had written The Battle of Marathon (1820) and An Essay of Mind (1826). Later she became interested in social problems, and reflected the passion of the age for reform in such poems as “The Cry of the Children,” a protest against child labor which once vied in interest with Hood’s famous “Song of the Shirt”. Her great work was Sonnets From the Portueguese (1850). It was a collection of love songs which was made for her husband. Her works during his last life related to spiritualism and the Italian independence movement.  She became a supporter of the unification of Italy by  Casa Guidi Windows (1851). Besides it, she  also opposed slavery in The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1849) and Poems Before Congress (1860).

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is one of the most famous English novelists of the Victorian period. Dickens addresses social problems like hypocrisy and injustice in his works. Charles Dickens wrote such classics as “Oliver Twist” and “David Copperfield”, published in our literature collection.

Charles Dickens was born in Landport on February 7, 1812. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and later to Chatham, where he received education. At the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John Dickens was in a debtor's prison.

In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and later in 1827 at Mr. Dawson's school. From 1827 to 1828 he worked as a law office clerk, and then worked as a correspondent at Doctor's Commons.

Dickens started to contribute short stories and essays to several periodicals in 1833. “Pickwick Papers” was published in 1836 and shortly after that, Dickens became famous worldwide. Dickens became editor of a magazine called “Bentley's Miscellany” in 1836. Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836. They separated in 1858.

In 1837 Dickens started to publish one of his best-known novels “Oliver Twist” in “Bentley's Miscellany” in monthly installments. In 1838 Charles Dickens began to publish monthly installments of “Nicholas Nickleby”, at that time “Oliver Twist” was not fully completed. Dickens worked simultaneously on several projects and was famous for his creativity and productivity.

In 1850, Dickens started a weekly magazine called “Household Words”. He contributed quite a few serialized works in this magazine – “Child's History of England” (1851-53), “Hard Times” (1854), “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859). Dickens continued to work on his novels during this period, writing masterpieces like “David Copperfield” (1849-50), “Bleak House” (1852-53), and “Little Dorrit” (1855-57). Dickens addressed many social issues in his works. His novels had always reflected the problems of the ordinary people.

In 1860 Dickens moved permanently to his house near Chatham. He died at his home Gad’s Hill on June 9, 1870 and he was buried in Westminster Abbey. His last novel “The Mystery Of Edwin Drood” was left unfinished.

ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the literary club 'The Apostles' and met Arthur Hallam, who became his closest friend. Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830, which included the popular "Mariana".

His next book, Poems (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. Hallam died suddenly on the same year in Vienna. It was a heavy blow to Tennyson. He began to write "In Memoriam", an elegy for his lost friend - the work took seventeen years. "The Lady of Shalott", "The Lotus-eaters" "Morte d'Arthur" and "Ulysses" appeared in 1842 in the two-volume Poems and established his reputation as a writer.

After marrying Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836, the couple settled in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in 1853. From there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. During these later years he produced some of his best poems.

Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, "In Memoriam" (1850). The patriotic poem "Charge of the Light Brigade", published in Maud (1855), is one of Tennyson's best known works, although at first "Maud" was found obscure or morbid by critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone. Enoch Arden (1864) was based on a true story of a sailor thought drowned at sea who returned home after several years to find that his wife had remarried. Idylls Of The King (1859-1885) dealt with the Arthurian theme.

In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them the poetic dramas Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876). In 1884 he was created a baron.

Tennyson died at Aldwort on October 6, 1892 and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.