Victorian period introduction of revival of drama

LATE VICTORIAN
LITERATURE (1880-
1900)

The Late Victorian Period (1880-
1900)
 Decay of Victorian values
 British imperialism
 Boer War Irish question
 Bismarck's Germany became a rival
power
 United States became a rival power
 Economic depression led to mass
immigration
 Socialism

Biography
 Was born on June 2, 1840 in
Dorset, England and died on January
11, 1928
 Hardy's mother, provided for his
education.
 Hardy was apprenticed to an architect.
 He worked in an office, which specialized
in restoration of churches.
 In 1874 Hardy married Emma Lavinia
Gifford. Who then died in 1912
 In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence
Emily Dugdale.

Occupation
 Thomas Hardy was an English
novelist, short story writer, and poet.
 He was a Victorian Poet
 He used his writings to elaborate his own
pessimistic view of life
 His poetry marks the transition from the
Victorian Age to the modernist movement
of the 20th century

Achievements
 First success was Far From the Madding
Crowd, published in 1874.
 Many of his stories have been filmed.
 He has been regarded as a regional
novelist

Novels
 Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
 A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
 Far From the Madding Crowd (1874)
 The Return of the Native (1878)
 The Trumpet-Major (1880)
 Two on a Tower (1882)
 The Mayor of Caster Bridge (1886)
 The Woodlanders (1887)
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
 Jude the Obscure (1895)
 The Well-Beloved (1897)

Short Stories
 Barbara of the House of Grebe (1890)
 The Vampirine Fair (1909)
 Absent-mindedness in a Parish Choir
 The Duke's Reappearance
 The Return of the Native (excerpt)
 Squire Petrick's Lady
 Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver
 The Withered Arm

Henry James
American-born writer, gifted with
talents in literature, psychology, and
philosophy.
 James wrote 20 novels, 112 stories, 12
plays and a number of works of literary
criticism.

His Major Achievement and
Specific Feature of His Works
 James first achieved recognition as a writer
of the “international novel” (international
theme)---a story which brings together
persons of various nationalities who
represent certain characteristics of their
countries.
 The American’s, however, usually have a
morality and innocence which the Europeans
lack.
 James seemed to value both the
sophistication of Europe and the idealism of
America.

Notable works by James
 Novels
 Novellas and tales
 Travel writings
 Literary criticism
 Memoirs and Autobiography
 Plays
 Biographies

Novels
 Watch and Ward (1871) )
 The American (1877)
 The Europeans (1878)
 Confidence (1879)
 Washington Square (1880)
 The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
 The Bostonians (1886)
 The Tragic Muse (1890)
 The Other House (1896)
 The Awkward Age (1899
 The Sacred Fount (1901)
 The Wings of the Dove (1902)
 The Ambassadors (1903)
 The Golden Bowl (1904)
 The Outcry (1911)

Travel writings
 A Little Tour in France (1884)
 English Hours (1905)
 The American Scene (1907)
 Italian Hours (1909)

Plays
Theatricals (1894)
Theatricals: Second Series
(1895)
 Guy Dom Ville (1895)

James' Literary Criticism
Henry James' literary criticism
is an indispensable part of his
contribution to literature.
He worked out his influential
principles of fiction in The Art
of Fiction (1884).

Themes
The Importance of Place
The Lived vs. Unlived Life
The American Abroad

Aestheticism
• Ruskin had emphasized the importance of Art and
Beauty as a means of moral progress.
• The Pre-Raphaelites had also worshipped beauty
above everything.
• The Oxford university professor Walter Pater, in his
essays published in 1867–68, stated that life had to be
lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty.
• Therefore it was quite easy for the painter James
McNeill Whistler to introduce the French doctrine of
“Art for Art’s sake” into England.
• This doctrine placed the artist’s activity outside and
above morals and led to the beginning of English
literary Aestheticism, which can be defined as....
• a reaction against any utilitarian or moral conception
of Art .

Aestheticism
 Art for Art’s sake” meant:
art for the pleasure and sensations that it
could produce, without any regard to standards
of morality or utility.
 The fundamental principles of this movement
were the following:
 The cult of beauty.
 The choice for a life beyond common
morality.
 The solution of the dichotomy between senses
and spirit through the theory of the
spiritualization of the senses.
 The reversal of the principle of art imitating
life into that of life imitating art.

Walter Pater
 Born in Stepney in London's East End
 Dr Pater died while Walter was an infant
and the family moved to Enfield, London.
• Pater was the defender of hedonism, a
doctrine according to which ...
• Pleasure is the chief good to be pursued
by man, i.e. the end of all human
actions.
• In his opinion , life should be treated in
the spirit of art, i.e. life as a work of art.

Literary Works
• In his “Studies in the history of Renaissance”(1873) he
stated that:
1. “the secret of happiness lies in the enjoyment of
beauty”;
2. “the finest sensations are to be found in art”;
3. “the deepest and noblest emotions can be
experienced in a life meant as a work of art.”
• Through our senses we can enjoy any form of artistic
beauty and thus live a deep spiritual experience.
• This is particularly true if we live our life as if it were a
work of art.
• These ideas made him a sort of ascetic hedonist.

Oscar Wilde
 Born on October 16 1855
 He was one of the most successful
playwrights of late Victorian London and
one of the greatest celebrities of his days.
 He suffered a dramatic downfall and was
imprisoned after been convicted of “gross
indecency” for homosexual acts.
 He died in Paris in 1900.

Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism
• Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal:
he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”.
• His aestheticism clashed with the
didacticism of Victorian novels.
• The artist = the creator of beautiful
things.

Literary Works
 Poetry; Poems 1891 The Ballad of Reading
Gaol, 1898
 Fairy tales: The Happy Prince and other
Tales, 1888 The House of
Pomegranates, 1891
 Novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
 Plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892 A
Woman of no Importance, 1893 The
Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
Salomé, 1893 Only Connect

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
(1856-1950)

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1856.
In 1876, Shaw, moved to London.
 With his background in economics and
politics, Shaw's socialist viewpoint gave his
writing a sense of hope for human improvement.
 After the turn of the century, Shaw's plays
gradually began to achieve production
and, eventually, acceptance in England Shaw
received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925
 In 1950, Shaw fell off a ladder while trimming a
tree on his property outside of London, and died
a few days later of complications from the
injury, at the age of 94.

SHAW INFLUENCES
 Shaw first worked as an art critic, then music
critic, and finally, from 1895 to 1898, as
Theatre Critic for the Saturday Review .
 Founded the Fabian Society, a socialist
political organization dedicated to
transforming Britain into a socialist state
through education.
 The Fabian society would later be
instrumental in founding the London School
of Economics and the Labor Party.

SHAW INFLUENCES
 The outbreak of war in 1914 changed Shaw's
life.
 For Shaw, the war represented the
bankruptcy of the capitalist system and a
tragic waste of young lives, all under the
guise of patriotism.
 He expressed his opinions in a series of
newspaper articles which proved to be a
disaster for Shaw's public stature: he was
treated as an outcast, and there was even talk
of his being tried for treason.

Victorian period introduction of revival of drama

Victorian period introduction of revival of drama

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Victorian period introduction of revival of drama