1. 1. Victorian Age (1832-1901)
2. 2. Victorian Age Period of Queen Victorias reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901 It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain
3. 3. She had the longest reign in British history Became queen at the age of 18 She also had a gift for drawing and painting
4. 4. She maintained a sense of dignity and decorum that restored the average persons high opinion of the monarchy after a series of horrible, ineffective leaders 1840 -Victoria married a German prince, Albert, who became not king, but Prince -consort After he died in 1861, she sank into a deep depression and wore black every day for the rest of her life
5. 5. During the Victorian Age, great economic, social, and political changes. The empire reached its height and covered about a fourth of worlds land. Industry and trade expanded rapidly. Science and technology made advances.
6. 6. By 1850s, a lot of people were getting an education. The government introduced democratic reforms. In spite of prosperity, factory and farm workers lived in terrible poverty. Benjamin Disraeli described England as two nation, one rich and one poor.
7. 7. During the second half of the 1800s, new scientific theories seemed to challenge many religious beliefs. The most controversial theory appeared in The Origin of Species (1859) by the biologist Charles Darwin.
8. 8. Poetry
9. 9. Victorian Poetry The Victorian Age produced a large and diverse body of poetry. The Romantic style predominated at first, but realism and naturalism force as time went on.
10. 10. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809- 1892) - He is the most popular poet of the era, hes a romantic poet. - Influenced by earlier romantic poets, especially Walter Scott.
11. 11. Alfred, Lord Tennyson - he wrote many long narrative poems on ancient and medieval themes like the King Arthur legend. - his verse displays a keen sense of the music language, and some of his more sentimental lyrics reappeared in popular songs.
12. 12. Alfred, Lord Tennyson Works: - Ulysses (1842) - In Memoriam (1850) - The Lady of Shalott - Tears, Idle Tears - The Splendors Falls - The Lotos-Eaters - Crossing the Bar
13. 13. "Ulysses" An oft-quoted poem, it is popularly used to illustrate the dramatic monologue form. Facing old age, mythical hero Ulysses describes his discontent and restlessness upon returning to his kingdom, Ithaca, after his far- ranging travels. Despite his reunion with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, Ulysses yearns to explore again.
14. 14. - is a poem completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It contains some of Tennyson's most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.
15. 15. I I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears? Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss: Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground, Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast, `Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.'
16. 16. VII Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.
17. 17. LXXXII I wage not any feud with Death For changes wrought on form and face; No lower life that earth's embrace May breed with him, can fright my faith. Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks; And these are but the shatter'd stalks, Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth: I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart; He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.
18. 18. CXXX Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair. What art thou then? I cannot guess; But tho' I seem in star and flower To feel thee some diffusive power, I do not therefore love thee less: My love involves the love before; My love is vaster passion now; Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, I seem to love thee more and more. Far off thou art, but ever nigh; I have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho' I die.
19. 19. Robert Browning (1812-1889) - He produced a body of poetry as diverse as Tennysons, although in his lifetime he never achieved equal public acclaim. Many of his poems display Romantic attitudes.
20. 20. Works: - My Last Duchess - Home Thoughts, from Abroad - Love Among the Ruins - Prospice - Dramatis Personae (1864) - The Ring and the Book (1868)
21. 21. My Last Duchess (1842) The speaker, presumably the Duke of Ferrara, is giving the emissary of the family of his prospective new wife, presumably a third or fourth since Browning could have easily written 'second' but did not do so, a tour of the artworks in his home. He draws a curtain to reveal a painting of a woman, explaining that it is a portrait of his late wife; he invites his guest to sit and look at the painting. As they look at the portrait of the late Duchess, the Duke describes her happy, cheerful and flirtatious nature, which had displeased him. He says, "She had a heart how shall I say? too soon made glad..." He goes on to say that his complaint of her was that "'twas not her husband's presence only" that made her happy. Eventually, "I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together." He now keeps her painting hidden behind a curtain that only he is allowed to draw back, meaning that now she only smiles for him. The Duke then resumes an earlier conversation regarding wedding arrangements, and in passing points out another work of art, a bronze statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse. In an interview, Browning said, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death . . . Or he might have had her shut up in a convent."
22. 22. OH, to be in England Now that April 's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In Englandnow! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdropsat the bent spray's edge That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
23. 23. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) - He strikes as a twentieth century readers as the most modern. - The persistent theme of his poems peoples isolation and alienation from nature and from one another ha been echoed by many writers and thinkers of our own age.
24. 24. Works: - To Marguerite Continued - Self-Dependence - Dover Beach
25. 25. To Marguerite: Continued YES! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know. But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing; And lovely notes, from shore to shore, Across the sounds and channels pour Oh! then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent; For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent! Now round us spreads the watery plain Oh might our marges meet again! Who orderd, that their longings fire Should be, as soon as kindled, coold? Who renders vain their deep desire? A God, a God their severance ruld! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumbd, salt, estranging sea.
26. 26. Thomas Hardy (1820-1928) - Sometimes called the last of the great Victorian. - Like Matthew Arnold, he held a pessimistic view of the world. - Unlike Arnold, however, who sought to improve society, Hardy remained a passive observer of the ills of his century.
27. 27. Works: - The Darling Thrush - The Man He Killed - Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave? - Jude the Obscure (1895)
28. 28. "Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like just as I Was out of work had sold his traps No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown."
29. 29. Elizabeth Barrett- Browning (1806- 1861) - One of the best-known woman poets of her own or any time. - She received no formal education. - She began writing poetry as a child and, by the time she reached adulthood, had published four immensely popular volumes of verse
30. 30. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
31. 31. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) his novels are noted for their colorful, and sometimes eccentric, characters. Works: Olivers Twist (1837-1839) David Copperfield (1849-1850) Bleak House (1852-1853) Tale of Two Cities A Christmas Carol
32. 32. Oliver Twist (1837- 1870) The story is about the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then apprenticed with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets, which is led by the elderly criminal Fagin.
33. 33. A Christmas Carol (1843) - tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.
34. 34. Emily Bronte (1818-1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Bront siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.
35. 35. Wuthering Heights (1845- 1846) Wuthering Heights is the name of the Yorkshire farmhouse where the story unfolds. The book's core theme is the destructive effect of jealousy and vengefulness both on the jealous or vengeful individuals and on their communities.
36. 36. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) - Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde - He was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of a famous surgeon and a Dublin poet. - Wildes full name was as extravagant as he was.
37. 37. The Nightingale and The Rose It is the tale of a lovestruck student who must provide his lover with a red rose in order to win her heart. A nightingale overhearing his lament from a solitary oak tree is filled with sorrow and admiration all at once, and decides to help the poor young man. She journeys through the night seeking the perfect red rose and finally comes across a rambling rose bush but alas, the bush has no roses to offer her. However, there is a way to MAKE a red rose, but with grave consequences.
38. 38. English Voices Quotations by Prominent Figures of the Period Man is a tool-making animal. - Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. - Elizabeth Barret-Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
39. 39. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. - William E. Gladstone, Speech on the Second Reform Bill
40. 40. Its them as take advantage that get advantage I this world. - George Eliot, Adam Bede Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, A.H.H.
41. 41. A mans reach should exceed his grasp, Or whats a heaven for? - Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto He had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. - Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
42. 42. References: Various internet sources English literature book (forgot the title)