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Term 1, II English A Lecturer Dr Daniela Davidescu Brown

COURSE ON VICTORIANISM UNITS 3-4 NEO-CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC INFLUENCES

I. NEO-CLASSICAL INHERITANCE A. In the Novel The epistolary novel: In Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-1748), written in the form of letters exchanged between lovers, friends, and kinsmen, Samuel Richardson ---- highly personal, confessional tone, 1st person narrative, the readers empathetic response
Example from Victorian novels 1. First person narrative was often used by Victorian authors 2.epistolary echoes in mid 19c Charles Dickens Bleak House 3.(confetional tone of Thackery)I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one (although there are some terrific chapters coming presently), and must beg the good-natured READER to remember that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker's family in Russell Square, who are taking walks, or luncheon, or dinner, or talking and making love as people do in common life, and without a single passionate and wonderful incident to mark the progress of their loves.

The picaresque novel: followed a picaresque hero Henry Fielding, in Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jonesagainst (1749) a vivid panorama of lower-class society Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random (1748) Between 1759 and 1767, Laurence Sterne wrote his comic masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in which the hero, who is the narrator, is not born until halfway through the book

Victorian understanding of the picaresque hero He is an orphan(in 18c orphan meant to have no identy, therefore to no longer belong to society) 2 He is very generous and loving but very careless with regulations He is cast out from his family He goes in the world embaring on a quest of of identity and having an adventurous life He is a victim of circumstances.he is despite all odds in the end rewarded with1.getting him richly married . 2.getting him a new identity 3.getting him married to the woman of his dreams Most of Victorian heroes or heroins are also orphans but their adventures are not so very much in space.They evolve from inexperience through suffering. Unlike the 18c picaresque hero who was a trixter , the Victorian hero of picaresque influence has a tendency to keep his moral status intact.
2.getting him a new identity 3.getting him married to the woman of his dreams

The didactic novel: theories of education and politics were expressed. Most famous was the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's mile; ou, Trait de l'ducation (1762). A British didactic novel was Caleb Williams (1794), by the political philosopher William Godwin ---- didactic tone of the author
1. A Victorian reminiscence of the 18th c didactic novel is to be found the didactic tone of the author

The comedy of manners: it deals with the clash between characters formed by particular cultural and social conditions. the great example was Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, 1813; Emma, 1816). ---- comic typology

B. In Perspective 1.Society seen as a mechanism in which human beings are mechanichal parts for the whole device to run well. In some Victorian novels the stress falls on town life ,social classes and the responsabilty of the individual. The competence of reason to make the right choice.

II. ROMANTIC A. The Gothic novel: the element of horror is created by the use of apparitions, supernatural manifestations, chains, dungeons, tombs, and nature in its more terrifying aspects.

The first Gothic novel was Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). Later examples are Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).---- dark characters, mysterious settings and situations, unexplained manifestations B. Thematic influences: Medieval and Renaissance The Victorians manipulated [ SPACE] - the Imperial expansion developed the need for exoticism & for civilising savageness [ TIME ] - the past- history and culture

The Middle Ages The Renaissance

MEDIEVAL INFLUENCES

A./ Rich medieval material. The medieval way of thinking and expressing itself offered the 19th c. a very rich material: They adopted both the medieval quest for self sublimation (the Holy Grail) and the attraction of sin 1. glorious historical events 2. legendary cultural background : the Arthurian cycle the model of the knight: loyalty to God, the king, his lady, bravery, sublimation the rise & fall of social harmony: Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table theme of love:
Marital love between Arthur and Gwenevere .Sinfull love between Lancelot and unaccomplished love between Shalot and Lancelot

the spiritual quest, the search for the Holy Grail 3. deep religious background
Renunciation of wordly things, moral serious , simple life, the power to suffer for a promised afterlife and the historical biblical past brought into the present.

4. a return to the roots, to the origins (pre-Christian, Christian)- an attempt at defining the present, the identity of a nation

B./ Victorian use of medieval elements. Victorian literature & art made use of medievalism I./Neo gothic architecture, religious buildings like churches and chatedrals and secular buildings( the house of Parliament echoed medieval gothic architecture) A return to the past through architecture by medieval gothic. The visible stress is on the materialization and spiritualization. The religious looses its divine element in secular buildings yet trying to preserve some of it. The Neo Gothic elements become fashionable and are meant to build an atmosphere of the past.

II./ Painting, sculpture, tapestries . The Pre- Raphaelite movement & William Morris ( Arts and Crafts movement ) Characteristics: sentimentality, sweetness, lost essence Examples: the theme of guilt and forgiveness ( Arthur and Guenevere ) the change of roles (King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid by Edward Burne-Jones 1884) the unaccomplished love ( The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt1886, The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones1874) religious themes (Christ in the House of his Parents by John Everett Millais1850, The Annunciation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti1850 and 1855) III./ Literature: The Neo-Gothic influences coming from Romanticism: violent, thrilling feelings, dark atmosphere. NOVEL: Dickens (Great Expectations, David Copperfield ), The Brontes, George Eliot (Silas Marner), Thomas Hardy. ESSAY: John Ruskin (The Stones of Venice: The Savageness of Gothic Architecture )

POETRY: A. Tennyson, R. Browning, G. M. Hopkins, D. G. Rossetti, W. Morris

C./ The reasons Victorians made use of the medieval past: 1. to manipulate the past & reinforce a present idea
The medieval style was made use of in order to defend the Chartist movement.The 19c worker should be a creative thinker and not a machine.In the savageness of gothic architecture J Ruskin defend the rude gothic architecture because those medieval buildings had the freedom of the detail even though it was imprisoned within the religious masses. The Victorian builders are enslaved by machines. They simply reproduce a pattern emposed by patrons and their machines.

Political reinforcement of the present and a warning: legendary past failure for present success: Alfred Tennyson, THE IDYLLS OF THE KING (1859-1885). 12 books (chapters) that highlight different moments from the Arthurian legends (the influence of Thomas Malorys Morte dArthur). Several titles from The Idylls:Guenevere, Lancelot and Elaine, Merlin and the gleam, Morte dArthur, The Passing of Arthur. Themes: The struggle of the elite to restore order in situation of chaos and anarchy
The rise and fall of a civilization A warning for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Looking at the titles above, we notice the poets stress on sin, betrayal (adulterous love), disloyalty, corruption and death. The emphasis on the religious is not at all felt: the quest for the Holy Grail is a morbid mysticism that destroys the system: Camelot and The Round Table Catholic religious reinforcement: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)- the medieval scholasticism brought into focus.

He was influenced by the medieval Duns Scotus- Scottish theologian & philosopher, founder of Scotism. He believed in the existence of God to whom one could reach by knowledge & revelation. Through faith the soul became immortal & incorruptible. He sustained the primacy of WILL, LOVE, FREEDOM over the Intellect. Hopkins was also influenced by the Oxford movement.

Oxford Movement- a movement of ideas initiated by a feq Oxford students led by John Newman who were of the opnion that the Anglican Protestant Church has lost its credibility and many of its believers because it has distanced himself away from the original ceremonies of the Christian Church which were Catholic. Hopkins underwent a religious crisis and become a Jesuit priest. His religious poetry shows that everything is connected with everything in the Universe because all is created by God..Hopkins calls Inscape things that communicate with one another and Instress the energies that help the communication realize.

2. The Arthurian legendary past- a symbolic source for philosophising the relationship artist-world, dream- reality. In Alfred Tennysons LADY OF SHALOTT, the artist is caught between the world of illusions, of creation (the mirror) and the need to enjoy life (the window). Living means the death of creation.
3. The model of the medieval knight - the knights quest for the ultimate truth is an

opportunity for Robert Browning to describe the adventure of plunging into the experience of death and the adventure of seeing life as a Wasteland. ( CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME )
4. Suitable medieval models for the Victorian themes of love

a./ CELESTIAL. Intertexuality- a dialogue between Dantes Divina Commedia and Dante Gabriel Rossettis BLESSED DAMOZEL. In Rossettis poem, heaven is a sad, lonely place with weeping lovers are waiting for their pairs. Beatrice expresses the eternal idea of love and reunion with the beloved in an Adamic heaven before the fall. God is unimportant. b./ EROTIC. Understanding adulterous love: William Morris DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE (1858)

Arts and Crafts Movement, art movement of the last half of the 19th century that strove to revitalize handicrafts and applied arts during an era of increasing mass production. The movement coalesced in 1861, when the English designer William Morris founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, & Faulkner. Arguing that the true basis of art lay in the crafts, Morris and his followers attacked the sterility and ugliness of machine-made products; his firm promoted hand-made textiles, books, wallpaper, and furniture. 1 The Pre-Raphaelite Movement or Brotherhood was initiated in 1848 by three painters: a./ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( also a poet ) b./ William Holman Hunt (the oldest in the group at that time: 21 years old). c./ John Everett Millais. Dante Gabriel Rossetti made use of blurred lines, chiaroscuro and a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere. Hunt and Millais used strong and brilliant lighting, a clear atmosphere, and a nearphotographic reproduction of minute details. They mainly referred to biblical and medieval literary themes. (The painter James Collinson, the painter and critic F.G. Stephens, the sculptor Thomas Woolner, and the critic William Michael Rossetti (Dante Gabriel's brother) joined them by invitation. The painters William Dyce, Ford Madox Brown- interested in Romantic themes based on Byron-, and Edward Burnes-Jones who preferred the ancient classical and medieval themes, were also practitioners of the Pre-Raphaelite style.)
1"Arts and Crafts Movement," Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000. 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.