LECTURE 4.

The Romantics. Literature of Victorian age.

Romantic Movement in Literature began with the storming of the Bastille in Paris and the first spilling of blood in the French Revolution. Romanticism developed its own rules and standards, and the rebels became the lawful government.

The key year for English Romanticism is 1798. 1789 saw the fall of the Bastille, but 1798 saw the publication of the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

(1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). In the Preface to the second and the third editions of this book, Wordsworth laid down the principles on which he thought the composition of poetry should be founded. He was insistent that the language of poetry should be the language of ordinary men and women. He was against “poetic diction”; he wanted a return to imagination, legend, the human heart. Wordsworth’s profession was that of a poet; he had no other trade. In his early days he had been much given to philosophy. In 1793 Wordsworth wrote a poem, “Guilt and Sorrow”. It is about a homeless sailor who was driven to crime, and a lonely woman who had lost her husband and three children in the war; all suffer from the cruelty of the law, but the only comfort Wordsworth offers is religion. In 1798 Coleridge’s was published. Here he showed that Nature is the great teacher of morals, and the prime bringer of happiness, but Nature is much more than that: in Nature resides God. Wordsworth is neither Christian nor rationalist. He is best described as a Pantheist, one who identifies the natural universe with God, and denies that God. Some of the heroes of Wordsworth’s narrative poems – old men like Michael, the Leech-gatherer, the Old Cumberland Beggar – are not in themselves very interesting. Wordsworth sees in them rather symbols of the power of Nature or living guides to natural conduct, and so on. He also wrote great Ode – Intimations of Immorality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

His language is his own, his natural descriptions are fresh and immediate; he is a poet of the particular scene, not the general abstract image.

Coleridge’s contribution to the Romantic Movement lay in a return to the magical and mysterious. Coleridge’s three great poems – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan – are coloured with the mysterious and the supernatural. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a fantastic story of a voyage told by an old sailor to a passer-by who was going to a wedding.

The poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southy belonged to the group of the so called Lake Poets after the Lake School was that they introduced into poetry the short, forceful words and constructions of everyday speech. They brought sound and color into verse, drove out the artificial style of the previous age with its fashion of introducing characters of Greek mythology to express abstract ideas. These poets appreciated folklore and national art: they all insisted that poetry should be linked with the popular folk traditions of a nation; should be stimulated by these traditions and should develop them.

The Romantic spirit is associated with Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), and John Keats (1795-1821).

George Gordon Byron. Byron’s reputation in Europe has always been greater than his reputation in England. He became a legend. His poetry is self-centered – he is the hero of Childe Harold, of the remarkable antireligious drama Cain, of The Corsair and The Siege of Corinth. One of his masterpieces was Don Juan. Don Juan is perhaps not strictly a Romantic poem at all: there is too much laughter, social criticism.

George Gordon Byron was born in London, on January 22, 1788, in an impoverished aristocratic family. His father, an army officer, died when the future poet was only three years old. He was lame from birth and was sensitive about it all his life, yet, thanks to his strong will and regular training; he became an excellent rider, a champion swimmer, a boxer and took part in athletic exercises. Byron spent the first 10 years of his life in Scotland. He was fond of the rocky coast and mountains of the country.

In 1798 the boy inherited the title of baron and the family estate of the Byron’s, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire. Together with his mother and nurse the boy moved to Newstead, from where he was sent to Harrow School; at 17 he entered Cambridge University. While a student, Byron published his first collection of poems "Hours of Idleness" (1807). In 1809 it was published under the title of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". In this satirical poem Byron makes a wide survey of contemporary literary life. In the spring of 1808 Byron graduated from the University and received his M. A. (Master of Arts) degree, and next year took his hereditary seat in the House of Lords.

In 1809 he left England on a long journey, which took two years. He visited Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and Turkey, and during his travels wrote the first two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". After an absence of two years the poet returned to England. On, February 27, 1812, Byron made his first speech in the House of Lords. In 1812 the first two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" were published. They were received with enthusiasm and Byron became one of the most popular men in London. Between 1813 and 1816 Byron composed his "Oriental Tales". "The Giaour", "The Corsair", "Lara" and others. The hero of each poem is a rebel against society. He is a man of strong will and passion. Proud and independent, he rises against tyranny and injustice to gain his personal freedom and happiness.

In 1815 Byron married Miss Isabella Milbanke. On the 25th of April, 1816, he left England for what proved to be forever. Byron went to Switzerland. Here he made the acquaintance of Shelley, and the two poets became close friends. While in Switzerland, Byron wrote the third canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1816), "The Prisoner of Chillon " (1816), the dramatic poem "Manfred" (1817), and many lyrics.

In 1817 Byron left for Italy. The Italian period (1817—1823), influenced by revolutionary ideas, may be considered to be the summit of Byron's poetical career. Such works as "Beppo" (1818), a humorous poem in a Venetian setting, and his greatest work "Don Juan" (1819—1824) are the most realistic works written by the poet. Though the action of "Don Juan" takes place at the close of the 18th century, it is easy enough to understand that the author depicts.

Europe in the 19th century and gives a broad panorama of contemporary life. There are two heroes in the poem: Don Juan and the poet himself who in his many digressions speaks to the reader, expressing his opinion on different political, social and cultural problems. The poem is remarkable not only for its satirical descriptions and realistic portrayal of life, but also for its revolutionary ideas. Byron died on the 18th of April, 1824.

Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, in Sussex. He was a shy, gentle, kind and sensitive boy by nature.

In 1810 Shelley entered Oxford. A year later he wrote an anti-religious pamphlet called "The Necessity of Atheism", for which he was expelled from the University. In 1813 Shelley published his first great poem, "Queen Mab", containing sharp criticism of human society, past and present, and expressing his ideals as to the happy future of mankind. Almost the same idea of "bloodless revolution" is expressed in "The Revolt of Islam" (1818), a poem about the leaders of the revolt, Loan and Cythna, who sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom.

In 1818 Shelley went to Italy. The great works of art and the rich colouring of Italy gave new life to Shelley's poetic genius. Most of his best works were written under a southern sky during the last years of his short life. The - Cenci (1819) is the first of the poet's works where this idea is clearly expressed. Shelley's considerable dramatic power is manifested in this tragedy, based on an Italian murder story of the 16th century. One of Shelley's best works is his lyrical drama "Prometheus Unbound" (1820). Prometheus symbolizes the human mind and will. His captivity means that both the mind of man and man himself are enslaved. He suffers terrible tortures but does not submit.

On July 8, 1822, while Shelley and a friend of his were sailing in a small boat across the Bay of Spezia, near Genoa, a sudden and violent storm broke out. Ten days later their bodies were found washed ashore.

John Keats became one of the great poets of all time. His themes are simple enough: beauty in art and nature; the wish to die; happy and unhappy love; the glamour of the classical past. He is a pagan, and the gods of ancient Greece are enough for him. The Miltonic epic he left unfinished—Hyperion—was to tell of the downfall of the old gods and the rising of the new gods of strength and beauty. But for the most part he is content with the pleasures of the senses—wine, love, and the sights and sounds of nature. Keats died of tuberculosis.

Walter Scott. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was both poet and novelist. He' first established himself as a great writer of narrative verse. Poems which glorified Scotland's scenery and history—The Lay of the Last Mistrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake—made him wealthy and famous. Scott seems to have realized, at the age of 43, that his poetic genius was exhausted, and he turned then to the writing of novels. Scott's themes are historical. They deal with European history—sometimes French, as in Quentin Dunvard, but more often English or Scottish. The novels about Scotland's past include Waverley, Old Mortality, Roh Roy, The Heart of Midlothsan, The Bride of hammer moor; England in the time of the Tudors and Stuarts is the theme of The Fortunes of Nigel, Kenilworth, Peveril of the Peak, and so on. The folk ballads Walter Scott had collected were the first poetic work he published. The best were "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), "Marmion" (1888), and "The Lady of the Lake" (1810). These poems reproduce old legends and combine them with historical material. They were written with great poetic skill and accompanied by such beautiful descriptions.

In 1814 Scott published his "Waverley, or "Tis Sixty Years Since". Because he had an established reputation as a poet, Scott decided to print his first novel anonymously. The book was a great success, and everybody wanted to know who the author was. Scott published many of his novels under the name of "The Author of Waverley", but finally the secret was opened to everyone. During the next 17 years (from 1815 till 1 832) Scott wrote more than 25 novels and many stories and tales besides. Scott's works have been divided into three groups.

The first groups of novels are those devoted to Scottish history: "Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since" (1814), "Guy Mannering, or the Astrologer" (1815), "The Antiquary" (1816), "Black Dwarf (1816).

"Old Mortality" ¹ (1816), "Rob Roy" (1817), "The Heart of Midlothian" (1818), "The Bride of Lammermoor" (1819), "A Legend of Montrose" (1819), "Redgauntlet" (1824), "The Fair Maid of Perth" (1828).

The second group of novels refer to English history: "Ivanhoe ['aivanhoul" (1820), the best of this series; "The Monastery" (1820), "The Abbot" (1820), "Kenilworth" (1821), "The Pirate" (1822), "The Fortunes of Nigel" (1822), "Peveril of the Peak" (1822), "Woodstock" (1826).

The third group comprises novels based on the history of Europe: "Quentin Durward" (1823), "The Talisman" (1825), "Count Robert of Paris" (1832), "Anne of Geierstein" (1829), "Castle Dangerous" (1832).

The novel "St. Ronan's Well" (1824) stands in a class by itself. The story is laid at a fashionable health-resort somewhere near the border between England and Scotland. It is the only novel written by Scott about his own time and shows his attitude to contemporary bourgeois society. It is a precursor of the critical realism of the 19th century.

Scott, the first writer of the historical novel. Scott was a conservative in politics: at elections he voted for the Tories. He was also a confirmed monarchist, but his conservatism was of a peculiar kind. Scott never wrote any flattering poetry and never acted for personal advantage at the expense of honesty. His feeling for social justice was sincere. He called for peace and compromise. This idea was always at the back of his mind: it is felt in all his works.

Fie was the creator of the historical genre in literature and constructed all his novels after a single model: the story is focused on the life of certain characters, usually lovers. The hero and the heroine of the story are separated. Striving to come together, they get involved in historical events and take part in them. They meet famous historical characters who play an important part in their fate. Then it is for the author to decide whether to make the end happy or unhappy. For more than a hundred years this pattern has been used by other writers, on the continent as well as in Britain.

The Victorian Age

Writers of that period had to represent the challenge of the new science to the old Christian faith. Darwin's Theory of Evolution hit at the Book of Genesisman had evolved from lower forms of life; he had not been created complete by God. (The Origin of Species, presenting his revolutionary theory, appeared in 1859.) Materialism, which denied the existence of everything except matter—man has no soul, and even thought is secreted by the brain as bile is secreted by the liver—was another challenge to orthodox belief. Marx's epoch-making Das Kapital, written in London and published in 1867, preached a new conception of society and of the distribution of wealth, and it was based on a 'materialist interpretation of history.' In many ways, it was an age of progress—of railway-building, steamships, reforms of all kinds—but it was also an age of doubt. There was too much poverty, too much injustice, too much ugliness, and too little certainty about faith or morals—thus it became also an age of crusaders and reformers and theorists. It was an age of conventional morality, of large families with the father as a godlike head, and the mother as a submissive creature like Milton's Eve. The strict morality, the holiness of family-life, owed a good deal to the example of Queen Victoria herself, and her indirect influence over literature, as well as social life, was considerable.

Other characteristic of Victorian literature—especially prose—is the high moral purpose allied to a Romantic technique: language is rich and highly ornamental, a reflection of the new ' Gothic' architecture with it’s —to us—tasteless elaboration of design.

Charles Dickens (1812-70), perhaps the greatest—if not the most perfect—of Victorian storytellers. Everybody is aware of the faults of Dickens—his inability to construct a convincing plot, his clumsy and sometimes ungrammatical prose, his sentimentality, his lack of real characters in the Shakespearian sense— but he is read still, while more finished artists are neglected. The secret of his popularity lies in an immense vitality, comparable to Shakespeare's, which swirls round his creations and creates a special Dickensian world which, if it does not resemble the real world, at least has its own logic and laws and its own special atmosphere.. Dickens is a master of the grotesque and his characters are really 'humours'—exaggerations of one human quality to the point of caricature. The world created by Dickens is mainly a kind of Nightmare London of chop-houses, prisons, lawyers' offices, and taverns, dark foggy, and cold, but very much alive. Dickens's novels are all animated by a sense of injustice and personal wrong; he is concerned with the problems of crime and poverty, but he does not seem to believe that matters can be improved by legislation or reform movements-everything depends on the individual, particularly the wealthy philanthropist. If he has a doctrine, it is one of love.

His novels fall roughly into groups. Starting with Pickwick Papers, a picaresque masterpiece in which plot does not matter, but everything depends on humorous types and on grotesque incidents. Dickens moved towards historical novels—Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities. He also concentrated on the social conditions of his own day, as in Oliver Twist and Hard Times and presented, in A Christmas Carol, his view of man's duty to man—Scrooge, the miser, miraculously becomes a philanthropist; Christmas symbolizes the only way in which the world can be improved—by the exercise of charity. David Copperfield is autobiographical in its essence, and, in its long parade of grotesques. Perhaps the finest of the novels is Great Expectations, a long but tightly-knit work, moving, with something like penetration of character, and full of admirably conceived scenes. It is in this book that Dickens reveals, at its finest, his understanding of the mind of the child, his sympathy with its fantasies and its inability to understand the grown-up world. In some ways, Dickens remained a child: it is the weird wonderland of ogres and fairies that one finds perpetually recurring in his books.

This is a convenient place to mention briefly two Victorian writers who frankly, without any disguise, explored the world of fantasy for the benefit of children but were perhaps themselves more at home in that world than in Victorian Utilitarian England. These writers are very widely read—Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Dodgson (1832-98), and Edward Lear (1812-88). Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have a mad Dickensian flavor with a curious undercurrent of logic (Dodgson was a mathematician); Lear's nonsense rhymes are also mad, but far less mad than some of the works of the sane writers. Carroll and Lear are among the literary riches of the Victorian era; they may well be read when Carlyle and Ruskin tire forgotten.

It is customary to group with Dickens a novelist who does not resemble him in the slightest—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63). Dickens wrote of low life and was a warm-blooded romantic; Thackeray wrote of the upper classes and was anti-romantic, Thackeray started his career as a satirist, and wrote many humorous articles for the comic weekly Punch, also a couple of curious works—The Book of Snobs and the Yellowplush Papers. Vanity Fair is still his most-read work: it tells of the careers of two girls with sharply contrasted characters—Becky Sharp, unscrupulous and clever; Amelia Sedley, pretty, moral but unintelligent—and draws clever—wickedly clever—portraits of officers and gentlemen of the time of Waterloo. Capable of tenderness, but never of sentimentality, Thackeray is in many ways the superior of Dickens, but he lacks that strange, mad glamour that Dickens shares with Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, in the isolation of a Yorkshire vicarage, three sisters, none of them destined to live long, were writing novels and poems. Charlotte Bronte (1816-5$), who admired Thackeray, dedicated her most un-Thackerayan novel, Jane Eyre, to him. Here, in this story of the governess who falls in love with her master, himself married to a madwoman, we have a passion not to be found in either Thackeray or Dickens, a genuine love-story of great realism, full of sharp observation and not without wit. This story, with its frank love-scenes, was something of a bombshell. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, later re-written—with some quite radical changes—as Villette, tells other own experiences as a teacher in Brussels, and Shirley is concerned with industrial Yorkshire. Jane Eyre, one of the really significant Victorian novels, remains her masterpiece. Emily Bronte (1818-48) had, if anything, a more remarkable talent than her sister. Her poems are vital and original, and her novel Wuthering Heights is the very heart and soul of the romantic spirit, with its story of wild passion set against the Yorkshire moors. Anne Bronte (1820—49), with her Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is perhaps best remembered now because other sisters: her talent is smaller than theirs.

Wilkie Collins is, at present, enjoying a revival of interest with his Woman in White and The Moonstone. He is the first great British writer of mystery-stories, and to a gift of maintaining suspense, terror, and a credible plot he adds a clear prose-style which is quite individual.

Greorge Eliot (1819-90), whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, is also a writer with admirers, but she has not commanded the same general love as Dickens. There are signs, however, of a new interest in her work, and penetrating critical studies about her have been published (notably Joan Bennett's book). Her life is interesting: she lived, unmarried, with George Henry Lewes from about 1854 to 1878 (the year of his death) and had less than a year of legal marriage (with Walter Cross) before she died. Her strong personality and fine mind are evident from her books— Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Middle-march, Daniel Deronda, and others. She was interested in German philosophy (some of which she translated) but, despite a strong religious upbringing, could not retain a belief in Christianity. Despite this, she shows sympathy in her novels for the faith of others and she is always concerned with moral problems. She deals mostly with country people (the Tullivers in The Mill on the Floss are especially memorable), has a gift for reproducing their speech and a taste for their humor. George Eliot is important because she is prepared (unlike Dickens) to analyze human conduct, to show the moral consequences of even trivial actions—this makes her very modern—and to show how the minds of even humble people can be made noble through suffering. In a word, it is human dignity she is concerned with, even though she knows how to puncture pretensions with a sharp needle of satire.

We turn now to the poetry of the age. Alfred Tennyson (1809-92), who later was made Lord Tennyson for his contribution to literature, sums up many of the preoccupations of the period in work, which is thoroughly Romantic. The first works are 'irresponsible', delighting in the world of the senses, but the sense of Victorian responsibility is not long in coming, and moral problems begin to intrude. The Palace of Art teaches that beauty must be shared (a Ruskinian notion), almost suggesting the substitution of art galleries and public libraries for the aristocratic gloating over personal treasures. In The Two Voices we hear the conflict of a mind whose orthodox Christianity is troubled by the new materialism; but orthodox belief wins, and Tennyson sees in the Victorian family, on its way to worship, with the church-bells ringing, a symbol of stability and hope. In Memoriam, inspired by grief at the death of a friend, Hallam, sets out in greater detail the Victorian dilemma; in his despondency, the poet becomes morbidly aware of how the new science has made man shrink to insignificance in the universe, but, again, Christianity wins—intuition is better than scientific knowledge, Tennyson knows that religion has the answer to life's riddles.

Finally, we must glance briefly at Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), a Jesuit priest, follower of Newman, who, after ordination, burned his early poems, but, at the request of his superior, began writing again in his thirties, and produced work that, had it been published in his lifetime, would never have made much appeal. His poems were published in 1918, and he became almost immediately a powerful influence. We see him as a ' modern', but his work belongs to the very heart of the Victorian era. He is a deeply religious poet, perpetually aware of God's power and beauty as manifested in nature, but also convinced of his own unworthiness and, in his final sonnets, even of his damnation. His technique is so revolutionary.