Part I of Age of Tennyson (Novel) - background details about Age of Tennyson and Charles Dickens

1. HISTORY OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE
(Age of Tennyson)
Ms. Suganthi B
Assistant Professor of English
Sadakathullah Appa College, Tirunelveli

2. General Characteristics - Novel
• Transformation: Prose to Novel
• Vehicle of ideas and means of amusement.
• Analytical and complex modern world
• Spread of democracy - social and humanitarian
• Romantic revival
• Victorian novel
• Index of many-sided interests
• Conflicting elements
• Contemporary society
• Subdivision of labour

3. Books about..
• Sea and military life
• High Life
• Middle class life
• Low life
• Criminal life
• Industrial life
• Political life
• Artistic life
• Clerical life

4. Geographical lines..
• Irish life
• Scottish life
• Different English speaking countries

5. The Proponents
• Charles Dickens
• William Makepeace Thackeray
• George Eliot

6. CHARLES DICKENS (1812-70)
• 25 yrs - English novelist
• Inspiration: Smollett
• Great enthusiasm
• Follower of Smollett
• Spirit and tone
• His master
• Style
• Overflowing irresistible humour
• Unsurpassed descriptive power
• Vitality of characterisation

7. • Qualities
• Caricature characters
• Overwrought quality of emotions
• Loved melodrama
• Extravagant
• Mawkish
• Man of buoyant temper, unflagging energy
• Optimistic

8. Humanitarianism
• Humanitarian
• In the domain of fiction
• Product and expression
• Novelist with a purpose
• Books about: specific abuse(s) in the existing
systems
• Champion of the weak, the outcast and the
oppressed
• One of the greatest social reformers

9. • Against: hardness of heart& selfishness in high
places
• Greed and hypocrisy - wicked class
• Prejudices - divides - man frok man
• Keynote of his work: Humanitarianism

10. Notable Works
• Pickwick Papers (1837)
• Nicholas Nickleby
• Martin Chuzzlewit (1843)
• Dombey and Son (1846-48)
• David Copperfield (1849-50)
• Bleak House (1852-53)
• Little Dorrit (1855-57)
• A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
• Great Expectations (1861)
• Our Mutual Friend (1864-65)
• Edwin Drood - unfinished