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Tekst- og litteraturhistorie i de engelsksprogede lande. Session Three: Realism and The Victorian Age. Agenda. Romanticism: Wordsworth’s poems From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism Group work: ”On the Western Circuit”.
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Tekst- og litteraturhistorie i de engelsksprogede lande Session Three: Realism and The Victorian Age
Agenda • Romanticism: Wordsworth’s poems • From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism • Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism • Group work: ”On the Western Circuit”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Body’s Beauty (1864-73)
Soul’s Beauty • (1866-70)
Literary Romanticism • Wordsworth’s poems: • ”Expostulation and Reply” • "The Tables Turned” • "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” • ”Tintern Abbey” • The ”Preface”
From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism: Thomas Hardy, ”Hap”(1860) • If but some vengeful god would call to me • From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, • Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, • That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!" • Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, • Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; • Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I • Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. • But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, • And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? • Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, • And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . • These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown • Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism: • Belated Romaticism • The frustrated and unfulfilled desire for meaning, significance, unity, design, plan, etc.
I leant upon a coppice gateWhen Frost was spectre-gray,And Winter’s dregs made desolate/The weakening eye of day.The tangled bine-stems scored the sky/Like strings of broken lyres,And all mankind that haunted nigh/Had sought their household fires. The land’s sharp features seemed to be/ The Century’s corpse outleant,/His crypt the cloudy canopy,/The wind his death-lament.The ancient pulse of germ and birth/Was shrunken hard and dry,/And every spirit upon earthSeemed fervourless as I. From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism: Thomas Hardy, ”The Darkling Thrush” (1900)
At once a voice arose among/The bleak twigs overheadIn a full-hearted evensongOf joy illimited;An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,/In blast-beruffled plume,Had chosen thus to fling his soul/Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolingsOf such ecstatic soundWas written on terrestrial things/Afar or nigh around,That I could think there trembled through/His happy good-night airSome blessed Hope, whereof he knew/And I was unaware. From Romanticism to Victorianism: Thomas Hardy, ”The Darkling Thrush”
From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism • Painterly poetry: • The predominance of visual imagery in Victorian poetry: • “It tends to be pictorial, using detail to construct visual images that represent the emotion or situation the poem concerns.” (997)
From Romanticism to Realism and Victorianism • Belated romanticism: • “All the Victorian poets show the strong influence of the Romantics, but they cannot sustain the confidence that the Romantics felt in the power of the imagination. The Victorians often rewrite Romantic poems with a sense of belatedness and distance.” (996) • The frustrated desire that the joy of the thrush signifies “ some blessed Hope”
Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism “It would be more accurate to speak not of realism but of realisms, since each novelist presents a specific vision of reality whose representational force he or she seeks to persuade us to acknowledge through a variety of techniques and conventions.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, p. 995
Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism “the experience that Victorian novelists most frequently depict is the set of social relationships in the middle class society developing around them. It is a society where the material conditions of life indicate social position, where money defines opportunity, where social class enforces a powerful sense of stratification, yet where chances for class mobility exists.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, p. 995
Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism “Most Victorian novels focus on a protagonist whose effort to define his or her place in society is the main concern of the plot. The novel thus constructs a tension between surrounding social conditions and the aspiration of the hero or heroine, whether it be for love, social position, or a life adequate to his or her imagination.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, p. 995
Romantic Love • Each subject has one true object of desire • Love strikes at first sight and sweeps you off your feet • Love is reciprocal • Love unites you with your object of desire
Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism: ”On the Western Circuit” Outline Hardy’s “specific vision of reality” How does Hardy persuade us to acknowledge his representation as real, or convincing? (How does Hardy persuade us to acknowledge his representation of Romanticism as unreal and disastrous?) Which techniques and conventions does he employ? Plot and characterisation, point of view, imagery, etc.
Narrative, Victorianism, and Realism Wuthering Heights: The frame structure of the narrative: the novel contains Romanticism from the point of view of Victorianism.
Wuthering Heights • 2nd generation: From the perspective of two or three decades, Nelly Dean tells Lockwood about the • 1st generation: Desire, Heathcliff, Catherine1, and Edgar (selfishness, destruction, death) before returning to the • 2nd generation: Desire, Hareton and Catherine2 (mutuality, respect, amelioration)
