14. W. Thackeray’s works: the problem of the hero and the society.

Thackeray's "disbelief in heroes", as he himself called it, has very deep

social roots and reflects the satirist's sharp critical attitude to the reality he

depicted. It found its most splendid embodiment, of course, in his Vanity Fair,

to which he gave the subtitle "a novel without a hero" in order to emphasize

even more emphatically the fact revealed by his pictures that among people

living in bourgeois society there existed neither real positive heroes as prota-

gonists of positive moral and social values nor ideal romantic heroes and he-

roines living exciting lives full of breathtaking adventures, but that they were

all common people living their everyday existences who only very rarely

remained untainted by the baneful influence of the prevalent laws of profit and

money. Thackeray persevered in his retreat from"the great and heroic" also

in the three novels following Vanity Fair, by creating his characters as avowed

contrasts to romantically conceived heroes and pointing out explicitly in his

commentary that he did not depict ideal beings but ordinary people. But even

if in this trio of his great novels there do not appear romantically idealized

figures, there do appear, as I have demonstrated above, genuine positive heroes

who are bearers and spokesmen of the novelist's social and moral ideal. The

most explicit formulation of this modification in his conception of the heroic

may be found in his adverse criticism of the character of Tom Jones in his

lecture on Fielding, in which he insisted, as formerly, that "in novels, the picture

of life" there should not appear admirable heroes, since "there exists in life

no such being", but contrary to his previous practice modified this postulate

by adding that if the novelist intends to present such a character, he should

take care that he is admirable.

15. Romanticism and Realism in the novels of the Bronte sisters.

The traditional categorising of the Bronte sisters’ novels is not reversed by

this study. Rather they have been established according to a different understanding of Realism and

Romanticism. This understanding sets two criteria for categorising. One is the space distribution

due to the social, material, and psychological realities, in place of limiting one aspect of

reality as proper for one movement (psychological-Romanticism; social and material-Realism). The

second criterion is that of setting. Not in the sense of literally romantic ancient (specifically,

medieval) as opposed to realistic present or contemporary, however. The criterion gets a small but

significant modification. Romantics depict medieval elements (conceptual and abstract) more than

literal ‘past medieval time.’

16. Literary schools and movements of the threshold of the 19th and 20th centuries.

List of literary movements

Realism

Late-19th century movement based on a simplification of style and image and an interest in poverty and everyday concerns.

Notable authors: Gustave Flaubert, William Dean Howells, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Norris and Eça de Queiroz

Naturalism

Also late 19th century. Proponents of this movement believe heredity and environment control people.

Notable authors: Émile Zola, Stephen Crane

Symbolism

Principally French movement of the fin de siècle based on the structure of thought rather than poetic form or image; influential for English language poets from Edgar Allan Poe to James Merrill.

Notable authors: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valéry

Modernism

Variegated movement of the early 20th century, encompassing primitivism, formal innovation, or reaction to science and technology.

Notable authors: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D., James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Fernando Pessoa

Literary Movements and Periods

Aestheticism (c. 1835–1910): A late-19th-century movement that believed in art as an end in itself. Aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater rejected the view that art had to posses a higher moral or political value and believed instead in “art for art’s sake.”

Modernism (1890s–1940s): A literary and artistic movement that provided a radical breaks with traditional modes of Western art, thought, religion, social conventions, and morality. Major themes of this period include the attack on notions of hierarchy; experimentation in new forms of narrative, such as stream of consciousness; doubt about the existence of knowable, objective reality; attention to alternative viewpoints and modes of thinking; and self-referentiality as a means of drawing attention to the relationships between artist and audience, and form and content.

Naturalism (c. 1865–1900): A literary movement that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. Leading writers in the movement include Émile Zola, Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen Crane.

Realism (c. 1830–1900): A loose term that can refer to any work that aims at honest portrayal over sensationalism, exaggeration, or melodrama. Technically, realism refers to a late-19th-century literary movement—primarily French, English, and American—that aimed at accurate detailed portrayal of ordinary, contemporary life. Many of the 19th century’s greatest novelists, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, and Leo Tolstoy, are classified as realists. Naturalism ( see above ) can be seen as an intensification of realism.

Symbolists (1870s–1890s): A group of French poets who reacted against realism with a poetry of suggestion based on private symbols, and experimented with new poetic forms such as free verse and the prose poem. The symbolists—Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine are the most well known—were influenced by Charles Baudelaire. In turn, they had a seminal influence on the modernist poetry of the early 20th century.

Victorian era (c. 1832–1901): The period of English history between the passage of the first Reform Bill (1832) and the death of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837–1901). Though remembered for strict social, political, and sexual conservatism and frequent clashes between religion and science, the period also saw prolific literary activity and significant social reform and criticism. Notable Victorian novelists include the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy, while prominent poets include Matthew Arnold; Robert Browning; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Christina Rossetti. Notable Victorian nonfiction writers include Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Charles Darwin, who penned the famous On the Origin of Species (1859).