The Victorian novel - Appunti della lezione integrati con i contenuti del libro - Performer Heritage, 2 PDF

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Appunti della lezione integrati con i contenuti del libro...

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THE VICTORIAN NOVEL (P.24,25) Readers and writers For the first time there was an exchange of opinions between writers and readers; that could happen thanks to the growth of the middle classes. They borrowed books from libraries and read periodicals, in which where His members had different levels of literacy published novels in series BUT all were avid consumers of literacy

A lot of Victorian writers belonged to the middle-class. -this allowed the writer to be in constant contact with his public. -the plot had to remain interesting otherwise the reader would no longer buy the newspaper -the author could always change the story according to the success or the failure -writers had instantly reviewers from the public The Victorians’ interest in prose The greatest literary success/achievement of the age is the novel, which became the most popular form of literature and the main source of entertainment. The novel was influenced by different tendencies: -the spread of scientific knowledge made the novel realistic and analytical; -the spread of democracy humanitarian/altruistic

made

it

social

and

-the presence of moral disorders/unrest made the novel inquisitive and critic The novelist’s aim During the 1840s the novelists felt that they had a moral and social responsibility to fulfil/achieve. BEFORE novels dealt with the adventures of a social outcast or a hero. Only with Jane Austen the theme changed into girl’s choice of a husband; and with the Gothic writers the setting became a remote place in a strange past. Victorian’s writers wanted to reflect the social changes into their novels. Their books dealt with:    

Industrial revolution A description of the society how it really was The desire of democracy The growth of towns and cities

NO: the evils of the society terrible conditions of workers exploitation/abuse of children

They had a didactic aim. They used literature as a vehicle to correct the vices and weaknesses of the age

In England there was less criticism than in the other European writers like Balzac, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky because the historical conditions where different from France or Russia

The narrative technique  The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and establish a limit between “right” and “wrong” behaviours  At the end of the novel all adventures, events and incidents are explained and justified. Setting and characters The characters are realistic because the public could easily identify with The major part of Victorian novelists chose the city, which was the main symbol of the Industrial Revolution. Types of novels

 Novel of manners main representative: William M. Thackeray main features: it dealt with economic and social problems and described a particular class or situation  Humanitarian novel main main representative: Charles Dickens main features: it could be divided into novels of a ‘realistic’, ‘fantastic’ or ‘moral’ nature according to their predominant tone or issue dealt with  Novel of formation main representatives: Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens main features: it dealt with one character’s development from early youth to some sort of maturity  Literary nonsense main representatives: Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll main features: it portrayed a nonsensical universe where the social rules and conventions are disintegrated, the cause-effect relationship does not exist, and time and space have lost their function of giving an order to human experience. Women writers During 1870s and 80s a great number of novels were written by women, who might publish their story used a male pseudonym. That happened because it was not easy to get publish and creative writing was considered masculine. The majority of novel-buyers and reader were women because they had more time to spend at home than men....