English literature: the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Victorian Era

English literature: the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Victorian Era

1. Enlightment literature 1650-1800

   • believed that the advances of science and industry heralded a new age of egaliatarianism and progress for humankind
     • Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton: progenitors of the Enlightenment
     • church criticised
   • Western Europe and the American Colonies
     • America: provided the accelerant for the fires of revolution
   • Alexander Pope, the greatest poet
     • Heroic couplet
     • Masterpiece: The Dunciad
     • Pessimistic about the future
   • End of Enlightenment: French Revolution (1789)

2. Romanticism: through the end of the 18th century to about 1870

   • concerned with the individual more than with society
     • individual imagination
       • downgrading of the importance and power of reason - reaction against Enlightenment
         • strong connection with medievalism and mythology
           • tales of King Arthur
       • English Romantic poets
         • loosening of the rules of artistic expressions
           • rhymed stanzas were given way to blank verse
         • popular theme:country life
         • mytological and fantastic settings
         • William Blake:(1790s) predates the high point of Romanticism
         • William Wordsworth:
           • Lyrical Ballads identified as the opening act of the Romantic Period

3. Victorian Era: roughly comprises from 1830 to 1901

   • Change: nearly every institution of society was shaken by unpredictable change
     • the economies of Europe expanded and accelerate
       • non regulation of business practices: laissez faire
         • peasants migrated from the countryside to cities:
           • slums and shantytowns
       • Thomas Carlyle:saw Industrial Revolution as engines of destruction, stripping people of their very humanity
     • Charles Darwin's theories brought humanity down to the level of the animal
     • The Woman Question
       • Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market--early feminist imagery
       • Charlotte and Emily Bronte
   • poetry underwent an evolution
     • First half of the 19th century: poetry was mired in the escapist, abstract imagery
       • Lord Tennyson
     • mid-century: more down-to-earth, realistic kind of verse
   • At some point, the novel replaced the poem as the most popular form of literature
     • Charles Darwin: called attention to real-world problems
     • Later Victorian Novelist: Thomas Hardy: (Jude the Obscure)
       • Hardy: forerunner of the Modernist Movement