Epoki

THE AGE OF REASON: a.k.a. the Enlightenment, the Restoration, the Augustan Age, the Age of Neoclassicism

; Coffee houses (since 17th c.); Periodical writing (press): Addison and Steele, The Spectator; „common sense” vs „private sense”;

The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke – empiricism;

The principle of equipoise; a balance of property – the land versus business;

a balance of classes - the gentry versus the middling classes and the mob; a balance in religion - Anglicanism versus the Dissenters, including other Protestant sects and Catholics; a balance in Parliament – Whigs versus Tories

Key terms: Nature, Wit, imitation, rules, decorum.

Neoclassical ideals: clarity, order, reason, wit and balance, good taste, urbanity, civilization, refinement

Imitation of the authors of the antiquity (Horace, Juvenal). Popularity of satire, allegory, comedy of manners. First English Dictionary (1750) by Samuel Johnson.

THE AGE OF SENSIBILITY: SENSIBILITY - sensitivity, emotional reactions, sympathy.

Aesthetics of the beautiful and the sublime; BEAUTIFUL - small, round, shining, pleasant;

SUBLIME - grand, powerful, threatening, dark, angular; Seeking solitude, Nature; Interest in psychology, melancholy, reflection on death

THE GOTHIC NOVEL - The Gothic; Aiming at achieving the emotion of terror through aesthetics (contrast between the beautiful and the sublime) and the construction

ROMANTICISM: Culture: medievalism (interest in the Middle Ages – e.g. use of ballad forms, folk tales, medieval history);

primitivism (interest in older, ‘primitive’ cultures); humanitarianism (a compassionate view of individual men and society)

); hellenism (interest in the literature and culture of Ancient Greece, also connected with an interest in the situation of modern Greece, enslaved by the Turks

Life/Art: interest in the remote in time and space, hence related themes of exoticism; interest in the uncommon, the macabre, the morbid; fascination with childhood; interest in Nature

respect for the imagination (vs reason); respect for individuality, for individual inspiration; Subjectivism favoured more than objectivism;

Poetry: reaction against neoclassical aesthetics and poetics; against a strict approach to literary genres, classical ideals, principles of decorum; Romantic ‘mixing’ of styles and genres

VICTORIAN ERA: The Victorian period started with the 1st Reform Bill that extended political rights (right to vote) to all males owning property worth 10 Ł or more in annual rent (it included lower middle classes, but not the working classes)

England was transformed from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial country; lived by producing goods for export and imported food. A network of railways covered the land, prospering middle classes

An optimistic vision of the present and the future; belief in perpetual industrial progress vs pessimism, criticism of materialism and industrialism

slums, child labour in mines and factories, urban poverty.

In 1851 Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s husband) opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, where a gigantic greenhouse, the Crystal Palace had been built

It was a symbol of modern age, technological advancement and Victorian prosperity and power.

The workshop of the world; Great Britain was rich, influential and admired in Europe and abroad; it was the most powerful colonial empire.

The workshop of the world; Great Britain was rich, influential and admired in Europe and abroad; it was the most powerful colonial empire.

The telegraph was introduced, as well as intercontinental cable, photography, anesthetics (painkillers), telephone, cars; universal compulsory education.

The Victorian „crisis of faith”; the geological discoveries of Charles Lyell (Prnciples of Geology); the biological ideas of Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species); doubt in the literal truth of the Biblical story of the creation of the world.

MELANCHOLY - vogue for medievalism continued – ballads, narrative poems on Arthurian themes, the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life

; didacticism: strained optimism in recognition of the need of heroic action: Ulysses. Existential doubts and personal introspection

General formal characteristics of Victorian verse: Romantic diction, frequent archaic expressions, preference for detailed, and stylized descriptions of Nature

Novels of sensation: a genre that emerged in Britain from about 1860, the precursor of the modern thriller:

: Horror: Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Adventure: Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson; Science-fiction: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R. L. Stevenson;

related in its form and character to an allegory, a moral fable, a doppelganger horror story, a gothic novel; Making use of strong symbolism; Detective story: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes cycle.

MODERNISM: Einstein’s relativity theory, Bergson’s different concept of time, Freud’s vision of the human psyche and the role of the unconscious in human life;

personal vision of what is significant; departure from the „common reader”; Reality: dependent on individual sense, passing mood, rather than objective facts

Personal, irrational feeling; Suggestive language, poetic rhythms in prose, symbolic overtones of meanings

Necessity of careful reading, not for the story, but for detail.

The Novel: six major figures - Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Wolf, D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster

shifting or multiple points of view in the narration; a strong sense of relativism as far as the discovery of truth is concerned

and various layers of reality demonstrated through the narrative; Ambiguity of character and meaning

Psychoanalysis, interest in the subconscious, libido; Colonialism, communication between cultures; Feminism, the place of women in the society

stream of consciousness

stream of consciousness - the continuity of impressions and thoughts in the human mind in unpunctuated or fragmentary forms of interior monologue