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The Victorian Novel/Fiction*. The Victorian novel in its middle period, was the first historical period in which fiction as a literary genre was culturally central ( * the realist novel was not the only form of fiction : silver fork fiction,short stories , detective stories )
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The Victorian Novel/Fiction* • The Victorian novel in its middle period, was the first historical period in which fiction as a literary genre was culturally central • (* the realist novel wasnot the onlyform of fiction: silverforkfiction,shortstories, detectivestories) • 19th century novel satisfied escapist moods of reader • The 19th century reader wanted to be entertained with a minimum of literary convention and esthetic distance, to be close to what he was reading • the novels became transcripts of life, journalistic approach, fiction is history • . • It carries both its sense of own importance and ordinariness
The novel is a product of social and political changes : the rise of middle class (an agent of change) • In 1837 literacy was increasing , books and newspapers were expanding their readership, moving further down on the social ladder • The popularity of the novel: the beginnings of mass readership • The middle classes swanted to read texts that seemed real -
„Classicrealist“ – the response to s consumerdemand • The term „realist“ wasnotcommonuntilthe 1850s • Theemergenceofmassmedia: WithCh. Dickensjournalism and melodramagatheredintothenovel Greatnovelists, creatednovelsofcomplexsymbolicmeaningreachingdeeperthanthesuperficialpatternofsocialaction • e. g in Dickens´snovelsimageofdesperateisolationoftheindividual (hisgrotesque and eccentriccharacters= lifeisirrational)
Victorianperiod had a strong taste forfantastic and melodramatic Greatnovelists, creatednovelsofcomplexsymbolicmeaningreachingdeeperthanthesuperficialpatternofsocialaction • e. g in Dickens´snovels image of desperateisolation of the individual (hisgrotesque and eccentriccharacters= life is irrational) • Hecombinestheoddwiththecolourful and thedramatic in urbanlifewithsentimentalhumanitarianattitude to humanproblems • combinationofcritical and sentimental • ThePapersofthePickwickClubstartsas a burlesque (Burlesqueis a humoroustheatricalentertainmentinvolvingparody and sometimesgrotesqueexaggeration.) and movesinto a picaresquecomedy
TheStyleoftheVictorianNovel • Victoriannovelstend to beidealizedportraitsofdifficultlives in whichhardwork, perseverance, love and luckwinout in the end;virtuewouldberewarded and wrongdoers are suitablypunished. Theytended to beofanimprovingnaturewith a centralmorallessonatheart. Whilethis formula wasthebasisformuchofearlierVictorianfiction, thesituationbecame more complexasthecenturyprogressed.
The 19th centurysawthenovelbecometheleadingformofliterature in English. The works by pre-Victorianwriterssuch as Jane Austen and WalterScott had perfectedbothclosely-observed social satire and adventurestories.
Significant Victorian novelists and poets include: Matthew Arnold, the Brontë sisters (Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë), Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Joseph Conrad, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, George Eliot, George Meredith, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Philip Meadows Taylor, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Thackeray, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and H. G. Wells (although many people consider his writing to be more of the Edwardian age).
