Late Vic./Realism (1869-1901) Flashcards
Late Victorianism / Realism
Second thirty years of Queen Victoria’s reign
1869 - 1901
Swinburne; Meredith; Rossettis; Hopkins; Newman; Morris; Mill; Arnold; Ruskin; Pater; Butler; Hardy; Stevenson; Eliot
American: James; Howells; Dreiser; Jewett; Crane; Twain; Douglass
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Late Vict. / Realism
With Dante Rossetti, was ranked by Robert Buchanan as of the “fleshly school of poetry.” Wrote many poems on the deaths of numerous literary figures.
Atlanta in Calydon
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Late Vict. / Realism
George Meredith
Late Vict. / Realism
Friend of Dante Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
George Meredith
Late Vict. / Realism
The Egoist
George Meredith
Late Vict. / Realism
The basic story is simple: Sir Willoughby Patterne’s betrothal to the young Clara Middleton is threatened when she realizes his enormous love of himself. The novel consists of Clara’s efforts to get out of the engagement without doing something so scandalous as eloping with someone else. The characters are drawn vividly and with depth. The incidents are both amusing and realistic. Clara Middleton is one of the great witty heroines of English literature, perhaps the wittiest Victorian heroine. Hero looks into her eyes so he can see his own reflection.
Modern Love
George Meredith
Late Vict. / Realism
sonnet sequence
“Lucifer in Starlight”
George Meredith
Late Vict. / Realism
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Late Vict. / Realism
Italian, moved as child to England with his father. An aesthete in the Victorian age (unique for the time). Classified as of the “Pre-Raphaelite School.” Robert Buchanan calls him (and Swinburne) of the “Fleshly School of Poetry.”
House of Life
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Late Vict. / Realism
A sonnet sequence:
- “Nuptual Sleep”—gratuitous sex, for the time.
- “Willowwood Series”—narrator sits on side of spring with character “Love.” Love brushes spring with foot, narrator’s dead lover appears in water and narrator kisses water. Love sings a song, lover disappears, and narrator drinks from spring.
- “A Superscription”—“my name is Might-have-been, No-more, too late, farewell.”
Christina Rossetti
Late Vict. / Realism
Sister of Dante Rossetti. Worked in a women’s help center.
“Goblin Market”
Christina Rossetti
Late Vict. / Realism
poem of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Laura eats goblins’ fruit and grows old. Lizzie confronts the goblins and brings Laura the antidote. A parable about virgins and smutty Victorian men.
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Late Vict. / Realism
Born into High Anglican home. Tutored by Walter Pater. Wanted to be a poet/painter like Dante Rossetti. Later inspired by Christina Rossetti’s more moral and religious poetry. Enjoyed the writings of John Henry, Cardnal Newman, who had converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism (hence, his Apologia Pro Vita Suya.) Hopkins became a Jesuit priest. His poetry will always be among the greatest poems of faith and doubt in the English language. Invented “prung rhythm, ” (It is opposed specifically to “running” or “common” rhythm, and provides for feet of lengths varying from one syllable to four, with either “rising” or “falling” rhythm.) Also two terms, “inscape” and “instress,” which can cause some confusion. By “inscape” he means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things, and by “instress” he means either the force of being which holds the inscape together or the impulse from the inscape which carries it whole into the mind of the beholder.
“God’s Grandeur”
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Late Vict. / Realism
“Pied Beauty”
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Late Vict. / Realism
GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.
“No worst, there is none”
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Late Vict. / Realism
NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing –
Then lull then leave off. Fury had shrieked “No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief”.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
“Spring and Fall: To a Young Child”
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Late Vict. / Realism
MARGARET, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie. And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow's springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
John Henry, Cardinal Newman
Late Vict. / Realism
Influenced Gerard Manly Hopkins to convert to Catholocism—“Tractarianism” is the name of this period’s Anglican return to Catholicism. John Henry himself also converted. His style isn’t distinctive, so look for the subject matter.
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
John Henry, Cardinal Newman
Newman’s explanation of why he converted to Catholicism.
The Idea of a University
John Henry, Cardinal Newman
Late Vict. / Realism
Talks up the idea of a “liberal arts education.”
William Morris
Late Vict. / Realism
famous as a Socialist. Associated with the Pre-Raphealite brotherhood and friend of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Most famous for his ideas on art: Morris defined art as “the expression by man of his pleasure in labor”. In the Middle Ages art, according to him, artist were plain workmen. The things which are today’s museum pieces, where common things earlier. Art should become this again: “a happiness for the maker and the user.” Morris derived his art theories partly from Ruskin, who hated contemporary style and has said that a railway station could never be architecture. Ruskin advocated free schools, free libraries, town planning, smokeless zones, and green belts - ideas that presupposed social reforms.
The Life and Death of Jason
William Morris
Late Vict. / Realism
appeared in 1867, and was based on the story of Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts.
J.S. Mill
Late Vict. / Realism
Son of James Mill, who, with Jeremy Bentham, was the founder of Utilitarianism. Suffered some pretty intense melocholy and fell away from strict utilitarianism.
Autobiography (hint: late Vict. philosopher/critc)
J.S. Mill
Late Vict. / Realism
Famous passage involves his disaffection with trying to hard to be a utilitarian. He cites Coleridge as inspiration.
On Liberty
J.S. Mill
Late Vict. / Realism
Discusses the “tyrrany of the majority.”
“On Poetry”
J.S. Mill
Late Vict. / Realism
works to define poetry as the expression of the self to the self, rather than “eloquence,” which is the expression of the self to another.
The Subjection of Women
J.S. Mill
Late Vict. / Realism
Similar to Mary Wolstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women. Excoriates—on moral, rational, and practical levels—the social fact of its title. Compares women’s legal subjection to that of slaves.
Matthew Arnold
Late Vict. / Realism
Son of Thomas Arnold, famous headmaster of Rugby School. Catch phrases include: “sweetness and light” (borrowed from Swift’s Battle of the Books), “Philistines” (tacky middleclass), and “culture.” Advanced idea of “touchstones.” Was a “Christian Humanist.” Here’s a quote, where Arnold links poetry and religion: “More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.
Culture and Anarchy
Matthew Arnold
Late Vict./Realism
Extensively uses term “sweetness and light.”
“Scholarly Gypsy”
Matthew Arnold
Late Vict./Realism
student from Oxford goes off with troupe of gypsies.
“Dover Beach”
Matthew Arnold
Late Vict./Realism
Loss of general faith
“Ah love, let us be true to one another.”
“Stanzas at the Grand Chartreuse”
Matthew Arnold
Late Vict./Realism
one age dying, the other powerless to be born. Looks at monks like a Greek looking at a ruin of his god.
John Ruskin
Late Vict. / Realism
Originated term “pathetic fallacy,” which is the projection of author’s sentiments onto an inanimate object.
The Stones of Venice
John Ruskin
Late Vict. / Realism
analysis of architecture in Venice, reads economic, social and moral history through stones.
Walter Pater
Late Vict. / Realism
His aesthetics influenced Wilde
The Renaissance
Walter Pater
Late Vict. / Realism
Comments on art, and says phrase “gem-like flame”
