English literature: the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Victorian Era

Enlightment literature 1650-1800
1. believed that the advances of science and industry heralded a new age of egaliatarianism and progress for humankind
  1. Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton: progenitors of the Enlightenment
  2. church criticised
2. Western Europe and the American Colonies
  1. America: provided the accelerant for the fires of revolution
3. Alexander Pope, the greatest poet
  1. Heroic couplet
  2. Masterpiece: The Dunciad
  3. Pessimistic about the future
4. End of Enlightenment: French Revolution (1789)
Romanticism: through the end of the 18th century to about 1870
1. concerned with the individual more than with society
  1. individual imagination
    1. downgrading of the importance and power of reason - reaction against Enlightenment
      1. strong connection with medievalism and mythology
        tales of King Arthur
    2. English Romantic poets
      1. loosening of the rules of artistic expressions
        rhymed stanzas were given way to blank verse
      2. popular theme:country life
      3. mytological and fantastic settings
      4. William Blake:(1790s) predates the high point of Romanticism
      5. William Wordsworth:
        Lyrical Ballads identified as the opening act of the Romantic Period
Victorian Era: roughly comprises from 1830 to 1901
1. Change: nearly every institution of society was shaken by unpredictable change
  1. the economies of Europe expanded and accelerate
    1. non regulation of business practices: laissez faire
      1. peasants migrated from the countryside to cities:
        slums and shantytowns
    2. Thomas Carlyle:saw Industrial Revolution as engines of destruction, stripping people of their very humanity
  2. Charles Darwin's theories brought humanity down to the level of the animal
  3. The Woman Question
    1. Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market--early feminist imagery
    2. Charlotte and Emily Bronte
2. poetry underwent an evolution
  1. First half of the 19th century: poetry was mired in the escapist, abstract imagery
    1. Lord Tennyson
  2. mid-century: more down-to-earth, realistic kind of verse
3. At some point, the novel replaced the poem as the most popular form of literature
  1. Charles Darwin: called attention to real-world problems
  2. Later Victorian Novelist: Thomas Hardy: (Jude the Obscure)
    1. Hardy: forerunner of the Modernist Movement

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English literature: the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Victorian Era

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	Created by teresa canals over 6 years ago