The Victorian Period (1832-1900)

Question 1

What were people in this period trying to live up to?

Answer 1

A national spirit of earnestness, respectability, modesty and domesticity.

Question 2

What was the predominant preoccupation in literary works?

Answer 2

Common sense and moral propriety

Question 3

What caused the expansion of newspapers and periodicals?

Answer 3

Debates about current political and social issues

Question 4

What did Victorian literature (especially novels) offer?

Answer 4

A realistic, day-to-day portrayal of social life

Question 5

What is analyzed in the Victorian novels?

Answer 5

the society’s effects on the individual

Question 6

What is the great achievement of Victorian poetry?

Answer 6

Dramatic monologue - the idea of creating a lyric poem in the vice of a speaker distinct form the poet’s

Question 7

What did portagonists usually seek in Victorian novels?

Answer 7

fulfilment (of self & station in life)

Question 8

What was the main setting in Victiorian novels?

Answer 8

19th centure England

Question 9

What were key issues in Victorian novels?

Answer 9

society, manners, morals and money

Question 10

What was more important in Victorian novels?

Answer 10

Character is more important than action and plot.

Question 11

What is often the subject in Victorian novels?

Answer 11

Complex ethical choices

Question 12

Are events usually plausible in Victorian novels?

Answer 12

yes

Question 13

What did realistic novel avoid?

Answer 13

the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.

Question 14

What tones were used in Victorian novels?

Answer 14

comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact

Question 15

What has the Victorian novel traditionally served?

Answer 15

the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class.

Question 16

What are the generally looked upon greatest poets of the Victorian era?

Answer 16

Tennyson and Browning

Question 17

Birth and death Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Answer 17

1809-1892

Question 18

What was Tennyson at heart?

Answer 18

A romantic

Question 19

What was Tennyson interested in and affected by?

Answer 19

the social questions of his time and the development of science

Question 20

What did Tennyson’s poetry show?

Answer 20

all the emotionalism, the love of nature and of man, the admiration of medieval chivalry of his great forerunners

Question 21

What did Tennyson show?

Answer 21

a touch of the rationalistic views in his striving after perfection of form

Question 22

Poetry published by Tennyson in 1830

Answer 22

The Lady of Shalott

Question 23

Poetry published by Tennyson in 1832

Answer 23

The Lotos Eaters

Question 24

What did the poetry “The Lady of Shalott” show about Tennyson?

Answer 24

his interest in Arthurian legend

Question 25

What did the poetry "The Lotos Eaters" picture?

Answer 25

the romantic, dreamy atomphere of the East

Question 26

Poetry published by Tennyson in 1842

Answer 26

Morte d'Arthur

Question 27

Poetry published by Tennyson in 1850

Answer 27

Memoriam

Question 28

How did "Memoriam" begin?

Answer 28

In memory of a dear college-friend of Tennyson

Question 29

What was the subject of "Memoriam"?

Answer 29

dealing with man's problems of life and death

Question 30

What stories had always attracted Tennyson?

Answer 30

The stories of King Arthur and his knights

Question 31

What showed the twelve "Idylls of the King" about Tennyson?

Answer 31

his mastery of language, great melodiousness and a romantic love of the past

Question 32

Birth and death Robert Browning

Answer 32

1812-1889

Question 33

What was Browning's style like, in comparison to to Tennyson?

Answer 33

more conversational, more vehement (passionete), more experimental, more varied, and also more difficult than Tennyson'.

Question 34

What mondern poets has Browning influenced?

Answer 34

Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot

Question 35

What did Browning always prefer, unlike the Romantics?

Answer 35

men and women to Nature, the ciry to the country

Question 36

Who did Browning marry?

Answer 36

successful poetess Elizabeth Barrett

Question 37

When did Browning marry?

Answer 37

In 1846

Question 38

Where did Browning settle and why?

Answer 38

In Italy, because he loved Italian music, art and history

Question 39

What is Browning the poet of?

Answer 39

ambiguous situations

Question 40

What did Browning's genius find?

Answer 40

the most perfect expression in the dramatic monologue, in which a single person tells the story in such a way as to reveal his inmost soul.

Question 41

What is "My Last Duchess" about?

Answer 41

a proud and cynical Italian Duke that is showing his picture gallery to the messenger of a Count whose daughter he is going to marry

Question 42

Birth and death Charles Dickens

Answer 42

1812-1870

Question 43

How did Dickens chilhood come to a sudden and frustating end?

Answer 43

His father was put in prison for debt and he was sent to work in a boot-blacking factory

Question 44

How was Charles able to return to school

Answer 44

His father came home because of an unexpected inheritance

Question 45

The central characters of what novels reflect the despair of thee ecperience of working as a child in the boot-blacking factory?

Answer 45

Oliver Twist Little Dorrit Great Expectations

Question 46

What was Dickens when he began to write

Answer 46

a parliamentary reporter (writing a series of sketches of London life)

Question 47

Where was Dickens popular, besides England?

Answer 47

America

Question 48

What was everything that Dickens was?

Answer 48

a man of theatre, a supporter of social reforms, a radical journalist, a great public reader of his work, the head of a large family and he had a large circle of friends, including ladies he would not want his wife to know about.

Question 49

What formed the inspiration for much of Charles' writing?

Answer 49

The circumstances of his youth

Question 50

What creates a subtle contrast that Dickens exploits in his characterization, often with a fine sense of humour?

Answer 50

The thin line that separates the struggling middle classes from the poverty-stricken lower classes.

Question 51

What does Dickens reveal about London?

Answer 51

the unknwn dramas and styles of life in the streets and alleys, the prisons and other oppressive insitutions

Question 52

What is London to Dickens's characters?

Answer 52

a threatening background to their lives

Question 53

Who does Dickens clearly blame for the misery?

Answer 53

the responsible authorities

Question 54

Dickens is the first English novelist to do what?

Answer 54

expose the scandalously time-consuming processes of modern bureaucracy

Question 55

At what age and how did Charles Dickens die?

Answer 55

at age 58, after a storke brought on by hard work