Pre-victorian romantic novelists

1. Pre-victorianromanticnovelists Jane Austin (1775-1817) “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) Mary Shelley (1797-1851) “Frankenstein” (1818) Emily Brönte (1818-1848) “Wuthering Heights” (1847) Charlotte Brönte (1816-1855) “Jane Eyre”(1847)

2. Victorian romantic authors • William Blake – pre-romanticpoet and painter • Charles Dickens • Robert L. Stevenson • Thomas Hardy • Alfred Tennyson – VictorianPoetry • Robert Browning – VictorianPoetry • Dante Gabriele Rossetti – poet, painter, translatorof Dante

3. - American novelists- • Edgar Allan Poe (Boston 1809-1849) Short tales and fictions: Murders in the rue Morgue”; “the Pit and the Pendulum” • Nathaniel Hawthorne (Salem, Ma, 1804-1864) The Scarlat letter (1850) • Herman Melville (New York City 1819-1891) Moby dick (1851) • Henry James (New york City 1843-1916) “The portrait of a Lady”(1881)

4. Thomas Hardy OrderofMerit 2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928

5. FASCINATION WITH SUPERNATURAL • was an Englishnovelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

6. POET AND WRITER • While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, during his lifetime he was much better known for his novels which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

7. THE WESSEX (oldnameforDorset)

8. THE MOVEMENT • Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well-regarded as his novels and has had a significant influence over modern English poetry, especially after The Movement (a negative determination to avoid bad principles). • In Thomas Hardly’s work this its mostly a hostile, nasty fate that normally ends with the annihilation of happiness and hope) poets of the 1950s and 1960s cited Hardy as a major figure. • These 'bad principles' are usually described as excess, both in terms of theme and stylistic devices)

9. IN HIS WORK WE CAN FIND: • Omniscient narrator(the omniscient point of view: means that the narrator knows everything about the events and the characters and knows their thoughts and motives); • Nature is very important in his novels: it’s a proper character, it’s a significant part of the story; A simile is a literary device where the writer employs the words "like" or "as" to compare two different ideas. • Bitterness and hopeless loneliness; • Pessimism

10. IN HIS WORK WE CAN FIND: • Big power to visualize and evoke scenes; • Goes into every detail through the extensive use of imagery(used in literature to refer to descriptive language that evokes sensory experience); • and similes (is a literary device where the writer employs the words "like" or "as" to compare two different ideas):

11. WORKS: • Far from the madding crowd (1874);contrast between the urban world (capricious Bathsheba) and the rustic setting (of the farmer Gabriel Oak) • Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891);deals with the themes of misfortune, hardship (stenti) seduction and prejudices (predʒədɪs) • Jude the Obscure (1895); (the contrast between the ideal life a man wished to lead and the squalid real life he was fated to lead)

12. THOMAS HARDY • 2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928 Hardy died near Dorcester in 1928. He is buried in the Westminster Abbey

13. The end of the Victorian Age • Decadence (latin) de-cadere = falling away from the Victorian literary culture and values • Reasons: economic and agricultural depression ot the 1870s, • Industrial progress • Strict code of the Victorian way of life • Rise of a military hegemony

14. Fin-de-siècle movement • Search for novelty (interest for non-realistic and non-naturalistic elements) • Feverish hedonism:”argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good” (Dottrina filosofica che fa del piacere il fine supremo della vita umana); • Abulia, neurosis and exaggerated erotic sensibility; • Aestheticism “art for art’s sake”(sake=scopo);

15. Fin-de-siècle movement • Scornfull for contemporary society and mores (is the Latin term for societal norms, customs, virtues or values) • Curiosity, eccentricity, jewels, erudite and exotic vocabulary, sensations, emotions. • Poetry as a mean of enchantment

16. OSCAR WILDE • 16 October 1854 - Dublin, Ireland – • 30 November 1900 – Paris, France – Hewaseducated at Trinity college, Dublin and Magdalen college, Oxford. Hewas the founderof the Aesthetismand Dandyismbecauseofhis way of life and love for “doingnothing”; ofhischoiseofclothes (flowers in the bottonhole; a bow tie; coatwithfur; refined and extravagantelegance).

17. Life and works

18. Life and works • In 1884 hemarried and hadtwochildren • In 1891 hewrote the play “Salomé”(simbolism, magic beauty, lights and musical and illusoryqualityof the language. • Salome (or in French: Salomé ) is a tragedy The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of the tetrarchHerod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils.

19. SALOME’

20. WORKS • His following works were the novel: “The picture of Dorian Gray” (1891); the plays: A Woman of No Importance (1893); the Importance of Being Earnest (1895); An Ideal Husband (1895);

21. OSCAR WILDE • Later he was condemned to a two-year prison sentenced with hard labour on charge of homosexuality (illegal until 1967); • After his release he lived abroad (France and Italy) and wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) and De Profundis (1905 posthunous) about his prison experience: He died in Paris in 1900.