THE VICTORIAN AGE

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THE VICTORIAN AGE

• Features of the first part of the Victorian Age
• Faith in progress
• Optimism
• Moralism

Queen Victoria (1837-1901)

• The British Empire
• Industrialisation

Browning Tennyson
LITERATURE
Poetry
The major literary genre was the NOVEL

• Realistic novel
• Omniscient intrusive third person narrator
• Comments of the author
• Happy end
• To teach what is right and wrong
• To give a moral/judgement
• Logical connections in a linear way
• Linear chronological concept of time

The reader is not free!
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In the second part of the Victorian Age
RELIGIOUS CRISIS
AESTHETIC MOVEMENT (1880s)
Art for Arts sake
Charles Darwin The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859)
Friedrich Nietzsche God is dead
Art should not have any moral, social or
political purpose
It rejected the Victorian moral view of literature
People could no longer refer to God, but they
have to find them by themselves
Men are not a creation of God
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THE FIRST PART OF THE 20th CENTURY
World War I
New theories
Sigmund Freud The Interpretations of Dreams (1899)
Carl Jung The Psychology of the Unconscious (1916)
Albert Einstein General Theory of Relativity
(1905)
Henri Bergson William James
A basic element of mans unconscious mind is
formed by his racial memory
Space and time do not exist as separate phenomena
Peoples behaviour depends very largely on the
unconscious part of their minds
Past and future (as memory and expectation) exist
together with the present in peoples mind
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MODERNISM
Cultural movement during the first three decades
of the 20th century
Rejected the old Victorian standards
In LITERATURE

• How say things (form)
• Minimum plot
• The eclipse of the narrator
• The shift of the point of view
• The stream of consciousness technique
• Focus on the psychology
• Simultaneous concept of time
• Poetical language

The reader is free to make his personal idea
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VIRGINIA WOOLF(1882-1941)
One of the most important Modernist writers
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Developed a new way of expressing reality
No storyline One single day Clarissa Dolloway
goes out to buy flowers for the party she is
going to give in the evening Omniscient third
person narrator Events are seen through the point
of view of the various characters

• Technique is important interior monologue
• Omniscient third person narrator (kept to the
  minimum)
• The shift of the point of view
• Minimum plot
• Connectors
• Chronological time (external events)
• Simultaneous time (the flux of thoughts)
• Poetical language (repetitions, key words,
  poetical devices, mental images)

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JAMES JOYCE(1882-1941)
One of the most important Modernist writers
Ulysses (1922)
Dublin, 16 June 1904 (a single day) Three
characters (Leopold and Molly Bloom, Stephen) 18
chapters have titles derived from the episodes in
the Odyssey by Homer Leopold Ulysses Molly
Penelope Details of everyday life and the inner
life of the characters

• Formal aspect is very important
• First person narrator
• Stream of consciousness technique
• No logical connectors
• No punctuation
• Anaphoric construction
• Simultaneous time
• Demands a lot to the reader
• Joyce is extremely realistic