Helped the Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Turks; fever, died at Missolonghi in April 1824.
His poetry very popular in the 19th century, lost its appeal in the modern era:
a heartless, prejudiced, morally dishonest mind lacking a true perception of beauty?
spiritual truth could be experienced only through the sensations.
His poems are filled with vibrant energy; his stories are also told in an exciting way, manifesting a considerable technical skill.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
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Expelled from Oxford in 1810 for writing a text in defence of atheism;
he married the sixteen-year-old daughter of a London tavern owner and moved to Dublin;
In 1814 Shelley fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; they eloped to France in July 1814, taking with them Mary's stepsister Jane (later "Claire") Clairmont.
joined Lord Byron at Geneva (Frankenstein);
His wife committed suicide; he marries Mary;
Shelley and his friend Edward Williams sailed to Leghorn to welcome his friend Leigh Hunt; their boat sank.
After his death, Mary devoted herself to dissemination of his fame and his works.
his short lyrics are regarded the finest examples of English Romantic poetry.
Shelley often expresses the idea that humanity is essentially good and that institutions and conventional morality destroy and corrupt mankind.
he also manifests his hatred of authority and of any form of tyranny.
He saw poets as those who can reform the world through poetry, through their power of creative imagination and the enhanced perception of beauty.
Poets should become actual leaders of society and provide an inspiring example by unleashing their creative powers.
John Keats (1795-1821)
the son of a livery-stable manager and received relatively little formal education;
in the medical profession, worked as a junior house surgeon at different hospitals in London;
at 22 he devoted himself entirely to poetry;
tuberculosis;
he was ordered to spend the winter in a warmer climate, Keats left for Rome, where he died.
The year 1819 was crucial for his poetical career – it was during that year that John Keats created all of greatest poetry:
The odes (all composed in 1819) focus on the dichotomy of eternal, transcendental ideals and the transcience and the ephemeral character of the physical world.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the themes of permanence and transcience, of beauty and life are discussed through the description of the figures upon the Greek urn.
everything truly beautiful is also ephemeral.
the greatest thing life can offer us is found in beauty, therefore the aim of every individual should be to devote one’s life to the endless search for it.
THE EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL – SCOTT, AUSTEN AND THE GOTHIC
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
• Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector.
• She remained single all her life.
• she only wrote six novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion)
• the comedy of manners of middle-class life, that of country landed gentry in the England of her time
• the topic: a young girl who is either about to be married, or ready for it.
• World events do not impinge on the novels, and a ball at a local country house is more important than a great victory or defeat of Napoleon's.
Her Style
• classical restraint and elegant awareness of the form, skilful use of a dialogue
• a superb satirist, an extremely competent story-teller
• she makes us feel that we know her characters.
The Manners and Morality in Austen's novels
• Behaviour must be controlled, regardless of personal feelings - the people who cannot exercise restraint are condemned
• she does not object to people marrying for love, if there is enough money in the marriage to help love along the way. Marriage should be based on love, genuine understanding - and social suitability.
• she despises everything that is pretentious, arrogant and proud - but also breach of duty and decorum (e.g., when Lydia Bennett elopes scandalously).
Pride and Prejudice
• the clash between Elizabeth Bennet, the intelligent daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam aristocratic landowner.
• Darcy is proud of his rank and Elizabeth's inferiority of family;
• Elizabeth's pride is her self-respect and she is prejudiced against Darcy's snobbery.
• Ultimately, they come together in love and self-understanding.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
• educated at the high school at Edinburgh
• he became an attorney like his father
• He also became a partner in a printing (and later publishing) firm owned by James Ballantyne and his brother John.
• Scott saved the company from bankruptcy, from 1813 onward everything he wrote was done partly in order to pay off the lasting debts he had incurred.
• The corollary - haste in the production of all his later books and compulsive work whose strain shortened his life.
The Historical Novel
• Scott was a born storyteller
• He was a master of virtually new literary form, the historical novel.
• He had deep knowledge of Scottish history and society and depicted the whole range of Scottish society, from beggars and rustics to the middle classes and the professions and on up to the landowning nobility.
• He used the technique of the omniscient narrator and in dialogues regional speech.
• Romantic themes treated in a realistic manner.
Scott's Influence
• His influence on other European and American novelists was immediate and profound
• interest in some of his books declined somewhat in the 20th century.
The English Gothic Novel
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novels published in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century which expressed a vivid interest in the supernatural, the weird and the horrible, violence and unbridled passion, usually in a medieval settings.
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The most popular novels of the genre:
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Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk (1796)
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897),
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Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
THE VICTORIAN PERIOD
Queen Victoria
• In 1837 William IV (10 illegitimate children) was succeeded as monarch by his 18-year-old niece, Victoria.
• She was a religious mother of nine children, devoted to her husband, Prince Albert, and was regarded as the personification of contemporary morals.
Victorian virtues
• a close-knit family life, a sense of public duty, and respectability.
• evangelical religion
• utilitarian notions of efficiency and good business practice.
The age of reforms
• two politicians marked the period: William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli
• Women and children were barred from underground work in mines (1842) and limited to 10-hour working days in factories (1847).
Disraeli vs. Gladstone
Disraeli, greatly preferred by the queen;
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social reforms:
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trade union legalization
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slum clearance;
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also concerned with upholding the British Empire in Africa and Asia.
Gladstone saw politics in terms of moral principles;
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He introduced some of the most important Liberal legislation of the 19th century:
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the creation of a national system of elementary education;
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the full admission of religious dissenters to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge;
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a merit-based civil service;
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the secret ballot.
Irish Famine
• The winter of 1845-1846 marked by a potato blight in Ireland and the consequent Irish Famine.
• The blight returned in the winter of 1846, and the wheat harvest in Great Britain and continental Europe was poor.
• one million people are thought to have died between 1847 and 1851
• An estimated further two to three million immigrated to the United States, many of whom died en route.
Economic boom
• From the late 1840s until the late 1860s, Britain experienced an economic boom.
• The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London symbolized Great Britain's industrial supremacy.
The age of great inventions
• The railway network of 1850 more than doubled during the mid Victorian years, the number of passengers carried each year went up sevenfold.
• the telegraph provided instant long-distance communication
• inexpensive steel was made possible;
• steamship building began in the 1860s.
• The value of British exports tripled,
• overseas capital investments quadrupled.
• Working-class living standards also improved,
• the founding of the Trades Union Congress in 1868.
Late Victorian deflation
• unrest among Irish tenant farmers in the second half of the 19th century
• falling profit margins
• occasional large-scale unemployment
• the United States and Germany overtook Great Britain in the production of steel and other manufactured goods.
Britain Abroad
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Britain, in alliance with France and Turkey, entered the Crimean War (1854-56) against an expansionist Russia.
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In 1858 Britain abolished the rule of the East India Company and made India a crown colony; in 1877 Queen Victoria became Empress of India.
British Empire
• British arrogance about their culture and civilization.
• The British saw themselves as having the duty to spread their culture and civilization around the world.
• British arrogance about their culture and civilization.
• The British saw themselves as having the duty to spread their culture and civilization around the world.
Troubles Abroad
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in 1899 Britain entered the the Boer War which ended with a tarnished British victory in 1902 (concentration camps for the civilian Boer population).
The End of an Age (the Edwardian period: 1901-1910)
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In 1901 Queen Victoria died; she had ruled for 64 years.
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The rule of Victoria's successor, Edward VII, was in sharp contrast to that of his mother: the period was marked by never ending questioning of traditional opinions, institutions, and conventions.
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