15. “The novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, and the play in the place which each at different times held as the popular form of literature.” (Saintsbury.) Expand and comment upon this quotation.
16. In what respects did the spread of popular education affect the literary production of the period?
CHAPTER XII
THE POST-VICTORIAN AGE
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1890–1920)
The period covered by this chapter, thirty years in extent, begins with the decline of the Victorian tradition, and practically ends with the European War. It is a time of unrest, of a hardening of temper, of the decay of the larger Victorian ideals, and of the growth of a more critical, cynical, and analytic spirit. The period, one will find, is not very rich in literature of the highest class; and looking back over our literature, and studying the rise and fall of the literary impulse, the alternation of rich harvest with lean years, one is tempted to regard the post-Victorian age as an interval between two epochs, between the great Victorian age and another, still to be, that will be as truly great.
LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE
1. Decline of Poetry. For almost the first time in the history of English literature the poetical product must be relegated to a subordinate position. Much verse, some of great charm and considerable power, has been written, but very little of real outstanding literary importance. It is this decided decline in the poetical spirit that must make the period take an inferior place in our literary history. Even the Great War failed to produce a poet who might proclaim its ideals as Wordsworth did those of the French Revolution. One is reluctantly driven to conclude that the divine poetical impulse was not there.
2. The Domination of the Novel. Comparatively late in its appearance, the novel has now become the most prominent of the literary forms. The output is enormous, the general level quite high, and the scope of its subject almost all-embracing. The growth of the popular press, including the cheap magazine specializing in the production of fiction, the cheapening of books and journals, the increasing use of shorthand and the typewriter, all combine to add to the torrent of fiction.
3. Modern “Realism.” The tendency of the time is to avoid sentiment, and to look upon life critically and even cynically. There is a supercilious attitude toward enthusiasm, which is banned as being “Victorian,” a word which has assumed a derogatory meaning. In the domain of fiction this feeling is the strongest. Victorian convention is anathema; all subjects are explored, and handled with a frankness that would have horrified the moralists of the earlier age. A particularly strong school of novelists is interested in social subjects, and is affected with the prevailing economic unrest.
4. Foreign Influences. In other countries the same tendency toward realism is apparent, and has helped the movement in England. In Europe there were two geniuses of international importance, and both of them were fired with revolutionary social ideals: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), the Norse dramatist, and Leo Tolstoï (1828–1910), the Russian novelist. The influence of Ibsen went right to the roots of English drama, and the works of Tolstoï awoke English readers to the importance of Russian fiction, which is strongly realistic. French novelists of the realistic school, such as Émile Zola (1840–1902), had their share in the development of the English novel.