11. Landor. In what respect does Landor show a reaction from Romanticism? What qualities make Landor's poems stand out so clearly in the memory? Why, for instance, do you think Lamb was so haunted by "Rose Aylmer"? Quote from Landor's poems to illustrate his tenderness, his sensitiveness to beauty, his power of awakening emotion, his delicacy of characterization. Do you find the same qualities in his prose? Can you explain why much of his prose seems like a translation from the Greek? Compare a passage from the Imaginary Conversations with a passage from Gibbon or Johnson, to show the difference between the classic and the pseudo-classic style. Compare one of Landor's characters, in Imaginary Conversations, with the same character in history.
12. Jane Austen. How does Jane Austen show a reaction from Romanticism? What important work did she do for the novel? To what kind of fiction was her work opposed? In what does the charm of her novels consist? Make a brief comparison between Jane Austen and Scott (as illustrated in Pride and Prejudice and Ivanhoe), having in mind the subject, the characters, the manner of treatment, and the interest of both narratives. Do Jane Austen's characters have to be explained by the author, or do they explain themselves? Which method calls for the greater literary skill? What does Jane Austen say about Mrs. Radcliffe, in Northanger Abbey? Does she make any other observations on eighteenth-century novelists?
| [CHRONOLOGY] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century | |||
| HISTORY | LITERATURE | ||
| 1760-1820. | George III | ||
| 1770-1850. | Wordsworth | ||
| 1771-1832. | Scott | ||
| 1789-1799. | French Revolution | ||
| 1796-1816. | Jane Austen's novels | ||
| 1798. | Lyrical Balads of Wordsworth | ||
| and Coleridge | |||
| 1800. | Union of Great Britain and | ||
| Ireland | |||
| 1802. | Colonization of Australia | 1802. | Scotts Minstrelsy of the Scottish |
| Border | |||
| 1805. | Battle of Trafalgar | 1805-1817. | Scotts poems |
| 1807. | Wordsworth's Intimations of | ||
| 1807. | Abolition of slave trade | Immortality. Lamb's Tales | |
| from Shakespeare | |||
| 1808-1814. | Peninsular War | ||
| 1809-1818. | Byron's Childe Harold | ||
| 1812. | Second war with United States | 1810-1813. | Coleridge's Lectures on |
| Shakespeare | |||
| 1814. | Congress of Vienna | 1814-1831. | Waverley Novels |
| 1815. | Battle of Waterloo | ||
| 1816. | Shelley's Alastor | ||
| 1817. | Coleridge's Biographia Literaria | ||
| 1817-1820. | Keats's poems | ||
| 1818-1820. | Shelley's Prometheus | ||
| 1819. | First Atlantic steamship | ||
| 1820. | George IV (d. 1830) | 1820. | Wordsworth's Duddon Sonnets |
| 1820-1833. | Lamb's Essays of Elia | ||
| 1821. | De Quincey's Confessions | ||
| 1824-1846. | Landor's Imaginary Conversations. | ||
| 1826. | First Temperance Society | ||
| 1829. | Catholic Emancipation Bill | ||
| 1830. | William IV (d. 1837) | 1830. | Tennyson's first poems |
| First railway | |||
| 1831. | Scott's last novel | ||
| 1832. | Reform Bill | ||
| 1833. | Emancipation of slaves | 1833. | Carlyle's Sartor Resartus |
| Browning's Pauline | |||
| 1834. | System of national education | ||
| 1837. | Victoria (d. 1901) | ||
| 1853-1861. | De Quincey's Collected | ||
| Essays | |||
[CHAPTER XI]
THE VICTORIAN AGE (1850-1900)
THE MODERN PERIOD OF PROGRESS AND UNREST
When Victoria became queen, in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age which we have just studied. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and Scott had passed away, and it seemed as if there were no writers in England to fill their places. Wordsworth had written, in 1835,
Like clouds that rake, the mountain summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!
In these lines is reflected the sorrowful spirit of a literary man of the early nineteenth century who remembered the glory that had passed away from the earth. But the leanness of these first years is more apparent than real. Keats and Shelley were dead, it is true, but already there had appeared three disciples of these poets who were destined to be far more widely, read than were their masters. Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems appearing almost simultaneously with the last work of Byron, Shelley, and Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication of his collected poems, in two volumes, that England recognized in him one of her great literary leaders. So also Elizabeth Barrett had been writing since 1820, but not till twenty years later did her poems become deservedly popular; and Browning had published his Pauline in 1833, but it was not until 1846, when he published the last of the series called Bells and Pomegranates, that the reading public began to appreciate his power and originality. Moreover, even as romanticism seemed passing away, a group of great prose writers--Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Ruskin--had already begun to proclaim the literary glory of a new age, which now seems to rank only just below the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods.