Romantic Literature (1784-1832)

The writers in this period preferred the mysterious way of explaining their feelings, like the sentence: "long ago and far away." They believed in the creative power of the imagination and adopted an intensely personal view of the world. These writers are called romantics.

Thomas Gainsborough : The Honorable Mrs. Graham

The Preromantics

The preromantics were a group of poets who represented a bridge between classicism and romanticism. In many of their works, these poets signaled the awareness of social problems and the love of nature that became typical of English romanticism. The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote about rural characters. He often used Scots dialect. Burns's most popular verses include "Auld Lang Syne" (about 1788) and "Comin Thro' the Rye" (about 1796).

The leading preromantic poet was William Blake. His work was barely known when he was alive. Many of his most powerful poems are collected in "Songs of Innocence" (1789) and "Songs of Experience" (1794).

A poem by William Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Romantic Age, Poetry

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were the first important English romantic poets. They produced a joint volume of poems titled "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). Wordsworth's preface to the second edition (1800) is almost a handbook for romantic poetry. He explained why he wrote in everyday language rather than in the elevated poetic language of such earlier writers as Dryden and Pope. He also discussed why he wanted to write about everyday topics, especially rural, unsophisticated subjects. Wordsworth and Coleridge lived in the scenic Lake District of northwestern England and wrote expressively about the beauties of nature. Many of their blank verse poems have a conversational tone.

A part from "We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth:

--------A SIMPLE Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
--Her beauty made me glad.

Lord Byron created a semi autobiographical hero in such lengthy works as "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812-1818) and the unfinished "Don Juan" (1819-1824). Byron can be considered the originator of the antihero because he wrote sympathetically about rebels, outlaws, and other people traditionally scorned by society.

A part of the poem " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage":

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an idealist and social reformer. In his long poem Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley praised the individual who takes a stand against unjust authority.

To Harriet:

WHOSE is the love that, gleaming through the world,
Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?
Whose is the warm and partial praise,
Virtue's most sweet reward?

John Keats wrote intense and vivid poems, many of which deal with beauty and its inevitable passing. His major works include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) and "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819).

The ending part of "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

Beauty is truth,
Truth beauty,
That is all
Ye know on earth,
All ye need to know

Romantic Age, Prose

Romantic prose included essays, literary criticism, journals, and novels. The leading essay writer was Thomas De Quincey, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb. Hazlitt wrote outstanding critical studies of Elizabethan drama. These studies did much to revive interest in the plays of the Elizabethan Age. Lamb's warm and humorous essays were collected in two volumes known as Essays of "Elia" (1823) and "Last Essays of Elia" (1833).

The personal tone of romantic prose appears in the letters and journals of writers. The journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's sister, are especially interesting. She kept journals that recorded daily life in the Lake District during the time her brother and Coleridge worked on Lyrical Ballads. The journals provide a fascinating account of the creative process.

Horror stories called Gothic novels became popular during the late 1700's and early 1800's. Most of these tales deal with ghosts and supernatural happenings. Horace Walpole wrote the first Gothic novel, "The Castle of Otranto" (1764).

The two greatest novelists of the romantic period were Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. Austen wrote about middle-class life in small towns and in the famous resort city of Bath. The women in such Austen novels as "Pride and Prejudice" (1813) and "Emma" (1816) are known for their independence and wit. Scott wrote novels set in the Scottish Highlands or Edinburgh. His series of books called the Waverley novels are the first truly historical novels in English literature. Scott's death in 1832 marked the end of the romantic period.

Romantic Period, Drama

Unfortunately there is no drama in this term because from the late 1700's to the late 1800's, almost no important dramas were produced in England. Romantic period is important with its prose and poetry.

Albert Joseph Moore : Dreamers

Victorian Literature (1832-1901)

Victoria became the queen of Great Britain in 1837. This period is called the Victorian Age.

During the Victorian Age, great economic, social, and political changes occurred in Britain. The British Empire reached its height and covered about a fourth of the world's land. Industry and trade expanded rapidly, and railroads and canals crisscrossed the country. Science and technology made great advances. The middle class grew enormously. By the 1850's, more people were getting an education. In addition, the government introduced democratic reforms. For example, an increasing number of people received the right to vote.

In spite of the prosperity of the Victorian Age, factory and farm workers lived in terrible poverty. Benjamin Disraeli, one of the period's outstanding prime ministers, described England as two nations, one rich and one poor. During the second half of the 1800's, new scientific theories seemed to challenge many religious beliefs. The most controversial theory appeared in "The Origin of Species" (1859) by the biologist Charles Darwin. In the book, he stated that every species of life develops from an earlier one, which seemed to contradict the Biblical account of the creation of life. The theories of Darwin and other scientists led many people to feel that traditional values could no longer guide their lives.

As a result we can say that Victorian writers dealt with the contrast between the prosperity of the middle and upper classes and the wretched condition of the poor. In the late 1800's, they also analyzed the loss of faith in traditional values. In this period drama gets importance and poetry lost its importance because of the living standards.

Early Victorian Literature

Early Victorian Age, Poetry

In the early Victorian Age there is not such an important poet unlike the novelists and these novelists have some important works.

Early Victorian Age, Prose

Early Victorian literature includes some of the greatest and most popular novels ever written. Most novelists of the period wrote long works with numerous characters. In many instances, the authors included actual events of the day in their tales.

The novels of Charles Dickens are noted for their colorful characters. In "Oliver Twist" (1837-1839) and "David Copperfield" (1849-1850), Dickens described the lives of children made miserable by cruel or thoughtless adults. He pictured the grim side of Victorian life in "Bleak House" (1852-1853). In this novel, Dickens criticized the courts, the clergy, and the neglect of the poor.

William Makepeace Thackeray created a masterpiece of Victorian fiction in "Vanity Fair" (1847-1848). The story follows the lives of many characters at different levels of English society during the early 1800's.

The novels of the three Bronte sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne--have many romantic elements. The novels are known especially for their psychologically tormented heroes and heroines. Critics rank Emily's "Wuthering Heights" (1847) and Charlotte's "Jane Eyre" (1847) among the greatest works of Victorian fiction.

Several writers wrote nonfictions which deals with what they believed to be the victims of the time. For example, Thomas Carlyle attacked the hypocrisy that he saw in society in "Sartor Resartus" (1833-1834). John Stuart Mill discussed the relationship between society and the individual in his long essay "On Liberty" (1859).

Later Victorian Literature

Later Victorian Age, Poetry

During the late 1800's, a pessimistic tone appeared in much of the best Victorian poetry and prose. Lord Tennyson discussed intellectual and religious problems of the time in his long poem In Memoriam (1850). Matthew Arnold described his doubts about modern life in such short poems as "The Scholar-Gypsy" (1853) and "Dover Beach" (1867). Arnold's most important literary achievements are his critical essays on culture, literature, religion, and society. Many of them were collected in "Culture and Anarchy" (1869).

Robert Browning was one of the leading Victorian poets. He created finely drawn character studies in poems called dramatic monologues. In these poems, a real or imaginary character narrates the story. Browning's best-known work is "The Ring and the Book" (1868-1869). He based the poem on an Italian murder case of 1698. Twelve characters discuss the case, each from his or her point of view. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Browning's wife, wrote a famous sequence of love poems called "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (1850).

"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning:

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote experimental religious verse. His poems were not published until 1918, almost 30 years after his death. Hopkins wrote in a style he called "sprung rhythm," in which he tried to capture the rhythm of natural speech. Hopkins filled his poetry with rich word pictures and unusual word combinations. The "Terrible" sonnets (written in 1885) are typical of his work.

"Spring" by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.w

Later Victorian Age, Prose

The leading late Victorian novelists were George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans); George Meredith; Anthony Trollope; and Thomas Hardy. Eliot's stories deal with social and moral problems. Her masterpiece is "Middlemarch" (1871-1872). Meredith's novels, as well as his poems, are noted for their sophisticated psychological treatment of character. His major works include the novels "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" (1859) and "The Egoist" (1879) and the sonnet sequence "Modern Love" (1862). The six "Barsetshire Novels" of Trollope are gentle satires of life in rural England. They often tell of conflicts within the Church of England, always in a humorous way. One of them, Barchester Towers (1857), captures the tone and spirit of a mid-Victorian cathedral town.

Hardy's novels dominated English literature during the late 1800's. Hardy wrote realistic stories in which the characters are defeated by a hostile fate. He used the landscape of the imaginary county of Wessex to help create the brooding atmosphere of such novels as "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886) and "Jude the Obscure" (1895).

Victorian Age, Drama

English drama was reborn near the end of the Victorian Age. From the late 1700's to the late 1800's, almost no important dramas were produced in England. But by 1900, a number of playwrights had revived the English theatre both with witty comedies and with realistic dramas about social problems of the time.

Oscar Wilde recalled the glittering Restoration comedy of manners in "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). George Bernard Shaw wrote witty plays, but he was primarily interested in exposing the faults he saw in society. His major works of the late 1800's include "Arms and the Man" (1894) and "Candida" (1897). Sir Arthur Wing Pinero wrote a number of comedies and melodramas. However, he became better known for "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1893) and other social dramas.

Comparing The Poetry of Romantic Age and Victorian Age

Romantic Age and Victorian Age have some differences because of the living conditions and the life standards. Before Victoria became queen of Great Britain, poetry was the important part of English Literature. After Romantic Age, drama was reborn and became very important.

Romantic Age poets wrote in everyday language and discussed why they wanted to write about everyday topics, unsophisticated subjects. Especially William Wordsworth maintained this idea as we see in his poem "We are seven". In this poem, Wordsworth tells about a simple child who was an eight years old cottage girl. The concept of the poems was different in Victorian Age. These poets didn't write about everyday topics.

The subjects in Victorian Age were reflecting that period and the strict rules of Queen Victoria to the poor. The difference between poor and rich became an important problem and they lost their traditional values and it changed poetry. Traditional values and culture effects poetry and prose, so poetry has differences according to the country and the way of life. The meaning of culture could be different for everyone but for me it's religion, traditions, the way of life, arts and social life. I think culture changed in a way after Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" and people feel that traditional values and religion could no longer guide their lives. This situation doesn't only affect prose but it also affects the poetry of Victorian Age.

In Victorian Age a pessimistic tone appear because of the conditions of that term. In that term there were religious problems and many of the poets discussed these problems rather than everyday topics. Culture, literature, society and religion were the best-known topics of Victorian Age. In both of the terms we could observe that "love" is an unchangeable topic, which we see in Robert Browning's and John Keats poems. Also "nature" is one of the topics that both period poets used. "We are seven" and "Spring" include details about nature. Hopkins wrote in a style he called "sprung rhythm," in which he tried to capture the rhythm of natural speech and the love of nature also became typical of English romanticism. Pureness and happiness used mostly in Romantic period and the tone of the period was more optimistic than Victorian Age.

In the poems of Victorian Age, a real or imaginary character narrates the story but in Romantic Age generally poet narrates the story. In "Porphyria's Lover" a real character narrates the story unlike William Blake's poem. Romantic Period poets believed in the creative power of the imagination and adopted an intensely personal view of the world.

Hopkins filled his poetry with rich word pictures and unusual word combinations, so his works are great examples of Victorian Age. In Romantic Period, poets didn't use unusual word combinations because for them, it was not important how you write but it was important what you write about. Romantic Age poets put their feelings into their works unlike Victorian Age poets. Romantic Age poets didn't care much about the techniques but both period poets used blank verse.

The ending part of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats became very famous and it used mostly on calendars and on other books. These lines need to be read with seriousness, which the writer brought to them. I think this is a philosophical belief that beauty had a profound moral value. "Beauty" and "truth" reflects Romantic period as we also see in Shelley's individual who takes a stand against unjust authority or Lord Byron's semi autobiographical hero who believes in such things. In Victorian Age there is no such feelings that poets could reflect to their poems.

Comparing The Prose of Romantic Age and Victorian Age

Romantic prose included essays, literary criticism, journals, and novels but early Victorian literature includes some of the greatest and most popular novels ever written. Most novelists of Victorian period wrote long works with numerous characters and the authors included actual events of the day in their tales, so they were writing realistic.

The personal tone of romantic prose appears in the letters and journals of writers unlike Victorian Age. In Victorian Age imaginary takes place. In Romantic Period Horror stories, which are called "Gothic novels", became popular during the late 1700's and early 1800's. Most of these tales deal with ghosts and supernatural happenings, which can be considered as imaginary.

The important novelists of the romantic period were Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. Jane Austen wrote about middle-class life in small towns and in the famous resort city of Bath. The women in such Austen novels are known for their independence and wit. Also in Bronte Sisters novels we could see that women takes an important place and has her own beliefs and it shows the powerful character. The novels of the three Bronte sisters have many romantic elements and the novels are known for their psychologically heroes. Meredith's novels, as well as his poems, are noted for their sophisticated psychological treatment of character like Bronte Sisters. As a result we can say that Victorian Age novelists used psychology unlike Romantic Age novelist.

The Late Victorian Age novelist Scott wrote series of books called the Waverley novels, which are the first truly historical novels in English literature. In Romantic Age there is no historical novels written, because journals and letters were popular in that term.

The novels of Charles Dickens are noted for their colorful characters. Dickens described the lives of children made miserable by cruel or thoughtless adults and criticized the courts, the clergy, and the neglect of the poor. We could observe this concept in also Victorian Age poems. The reason for it might be Queen Victoria and the difference between rich and poor. Dickens wanted to criticize this situation, which became a problem. Of course we can't see that kind of criticizing in Romantic Age because it was not a problem in that term.

In Early Victorian Age, several writers wrote nonfictions which deals with what they believed to be the victims of the time and a pessimistic tone appear in the prose like poetry. A more optimistic tone was appearing in Romantic Prose like its poetry. The conditions of the terms are affecting the literature. Eliot, the Later Victorian Age novelist wrote stories which deals with social and moral problems like the other novelists of that term.

Resources

• The Works of John Keats, The Wordsworth Poetry Library, with an instruction and bibliography.
  
• Compton's 99 Encyclopedia Deluxe
  
• Encarta Encyclopedia 2000
  
• Webster's Gold Encyclopedia, 1999 Century Edition Deluxe
  
• World Book, millennium 2000