Four Goals of Cultural Studies

Four Goals of Cultural Studies

Name                          :           Bhumi Vajani

                                                M.A. – English Part – I

Sem.                            :           2

Roll No.                     :           04

Paper                          :           Cultural  Studies

Topic                          :           Four Goals of Cultural  Studies

Submitted to              :           Dr. Dilip  Barad

                                                Dept. of  English

                                                M.K. Bhavnagar University

Four Goals of Cultural  Studies

          ‘Culture’ is a term which has may connotations cultural is refinement or development of mind tastes, etc. by education, training and experience. It is a form of civilization. It can be called an advance development of the human power. Also culture is an evidence of intellectual development in a particular nation. The meaning and context of culture differs from country to country and person to person.

          A college class on the American novel is reading a famous book of Allice Walker called. The Colour purple (1982). In the classroom the professor identifies African American literacy and cultural sources and then he describers the book’s multilayered narrative structure. Also the professor gave a brief review of its feminist critique of American gender and racial attitudes. Films and novels of different countries show their varied culture even gestures differ from culture.

ORIGIN :

          ‘Culture’, derives from ‘Cultura’ and ‘colere’ meaning ‘to cultivate’. It also meant ‘to honour’ and ‘project’ by the 19^th century in Europe it tastes of the upper class (elite).

          ‘culture’ is the mode of producing meaning and ideas. This ‘mode’ is a negotiation over which meanings are valid. Elite culture controls meanings because it controls the terms of the debate.

          Culture studies looks at marker popular culture and everyday life. Popular culture is the culture of masses. A culture study argues that culture is about the meanings a community or society generates. A cultural study believes that the ‘culture’ of a community includes various aspects: economic, spatial, ideological, erotic and political. Culture is not a natural thing it is produced, cultural studies is interested in production and consumption of culture. Emphasis on discourse and totality are at centre to cultural studies. It believes that we cannot ‘read’ cultural artifacts only within the esthetic realm.

          Stuart Hall’s work has been a trendsetter in cultural studies and inaugurated the field in Britain. Hall’s essay of ‘encoding’ and Decoding ‘set the scene’ for cultural studies of the media. The essay argued about meaning within the texts – songs, painting, TV soaps takes helps of codes to organize. ‘Culture’ which makes a society “a cultured society”.

Margaret Mead: “Culture is the learned behavior of society or a subgroup.”

Clifford Geertz : “Culture is simply ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

The tone of this early version of cultural studies was set by students if the British New left, especially Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams.

Function :

          What cultural studies does is to interpret sings of culture such as the ones listed above as part of a power struggle to acquire, maintain or contest meanings. The ‘Critique’ component of cultural studies explores the political significance of the signs of signs as what they mask or gloss, what they refinance, cultural studies, studies the language in and through which meanings are made in a particular culture. Cultural studies questions how such meaning reflect the power struggle within that culture studies explores how certain meanings are privileged in that culture at the cost of others.

“A cultural study is the analysis of cultures systems of meaning – production and consumption.”

Steven spielber’s movies and opera Winfred show point out, examine inter-relationship among – race, gender, popular culture, the media, and literature. The director and anchor, both of them question cultural conventions. Historical and contemporary aspects are on the oprah Winfred show, in Hollywood films. The TV Programmers in our country also presents various cultures. Gujarati, Bengali and Rajasthan TV soaps on channels are famous now a days. Such movies also run well in theatres for long time.

Elaine Showalter in her essay on feminism talks about the different cultures and contexts. She talks about American culture as well as French culture. Ronald Barlher, Claude Levi-Straurs, Jacuque Derride and Michel Foucault all had to say one or the other thing about culture in their critical essay. A culture study has connection with maxims, the new historicism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, popular culture and postcolonial studies.

Cultural Studies approaches share four goals :

(1)     Cultural Studies transcends the confiner of a particular discipline such as literacy criticism or history.

(2)     Cultural studies are politically engaged.

(3)     Cultural studies deny the separation of ‘high’ and ‘low’ are elite and popular culture.

(4)     Cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.

(1)     Cultural Studies transcends the confiner of a particular discipline such as literacy criticism or history.

                   A cultural study is practiced in such journals as critical Inquiry, Representation and boundary. Italian Opera, a Latino ‘telenovela’ the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing – and drawing conclusion about the changes in textual phenomena over time-such things are found in these kinds of newspapers cultural studies not simply or essentially about literature in the traditional sense or even about “Art”. Lawrence Grosberg, cary Nelson, and Paula. Trencher stress that the intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in its attempts to “cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene.” Intellectual works are not limited by their “borders” as single text, historical problems or disciplines, and the critical own personal connections to what is analyzed and described. Henry Giroux and others write in their “Dalhousie Revise” manifesto that cultural studies practitioners are ‘resisting intellectuals’ who see what they do as “an emancipator project” as it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher educational. For students, this sometimes means that a professor might make his or his own political view part of the instruction, which of course, can lead to problems. But this kind of criticism, like feminism, is an engaged rather than a detached activity.

(2)     Cultural Studies is politically engaged:

          The cultural critics see themselves as “Oppositional” not only within their own discipliner but to many of the power structures of society at large. The cultural critics question inequalities within power structures and try to find out the models for restructuring relationships among the dominant and “minority” of “Subaltern” discourses. The meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, they can thus be reconstructed. This type of idea, taken to a Philosophical extreme, demise the autonomy of the individual whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “Great man” or “Great Book” theory and a relocation of esthetics and culture from the ideal realsm of taste and sensibility into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed.

(3)     Cultural studies demise the separation of ‘high’ and ‘low’ or elite and popular culture.

                   In these days cultural critics work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture, whether popular, folk, or urban. Jean Belldrillard, Andreas Huyssen and some other critics of cultural studies argue that after World War II the distinction among high low and mass culture collapsed. They look forward on other theorists like pierre Bourdieu and Dick Hebdige on how “good taste often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases.”

                   For example, the images of India that were circulated during the colonial rule of British ray by writes like Rudyard Kipling seem innocent, but reveal and entrenched imperialist argument for white superiority and worldwide domination of white superiority and world wide domination of other races, especially Asians wherever British or French or any other whoever ruled the colonist tried to show their culture superior. But race along was not the issue for the British raj: money was also another determining factor. Thus, drawing also upon the ideas of French Gistorian Michel de Certeam, cultural critics examine.

“The practice of everyday life”, studying literature as an anthropologist would, as a phenomenon of culture, including a culture’s economy. Cultural critics describe ‘what’ is produced and how various productions relate to one another. They do not determine to find out which one is the best work. Their aim is to reveal the political economic reasons ‘why’ a certain cultural product is more valued at certain times than others.

Changing of boundaries among disciplines high and low can make cultural studies just plain fun. Some of these examples are the given titles.

The birth of captain Jach Sparrow :

An Analysis

Disney’s pirates of the Caribbean: The curse o the Blach Pearl (2003)

R.L. Stevenson’s long John Silver in ‘Treasure Island’ (1881)

Keith Richard’s eye makeup.

(4)     Cultural studies analyses not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.

Marxist critics have recognized the importance of such par literary questions such as –

‘Who supports a given artist?’

‘Who publishes his or her books, and how are these books distributed’?

Who buys books?

For that matter, who is literate and who is not?

A well-known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway’s study of the America romance (novel) and its readers, “Reading the Romance: women, patriarchy and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry’s decisions effects of the publishing industry’s decisions about books that will reduce its financial risks.”

Another contribution is the collection ‘Reading in America which is edited by Cathy N. Davidson, which includes essays on literacy and gender in colonial New England, urban magazine audiences in eighteenth – century New York  city, the impact upon reading of such technical immolation as cheaper eyeglasses, electric lights, and trains, the book – of the month club and how written and texts go through fluctuations of popularity and canonicity. Thus we can say that literature is not separate from our past, present and future.’

Cultural studies joins subjectivity means culture in relation to individual lives with ‘engagement’ a direct approach to attacking social malpractices. The practitioners of cultural studies deny ‘humanism’ or ‘the humanities’ as universal categories. The practioners strive for what they might call ‘social - reason’, which often resemble the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.

Now, let us see what difference does a cultural studies approach make for the student? First of all, it is increasingly clear that by the year 2050 the United States would be what demographers call a majority minority population; by this one has to understand that the present numerical majority of ‘white’, ‘Caucasian’ and Anglo will be the minority Americans, particularly with the dramatically increasing numbers of Latina residents, mostly Mexican ameucans.

Gerald Graff and James Phelan absolve, “It is a common prediction that the culture of the next century will put a premium on people’s ability to deal productively with conflict and cultural difference, learning by controversy is sound training for citizenship in that future.”

To the enquiry “why teach the controversy?” they noted that today a student can go from one class in which the values of western culture are never questioned to the next class where western culture is portrayed as hope lessee compromised by racism, sexism and homophobia; professors can acknowledge these difference and encourage students to contract a conversation for themselves as “the most exciting part of their education.”

Above discussed are the four goals of cultural studies. Also a cultural study is divided into five parts. The first part deals with British cultural materialism where British culture and the writes and theorize are discussed. The second one in New Historicism. It discusses various historical novels with a new approach. In the discusses ‘Laputa’ is given more space and with it feminism is appropriately discussed. The third one is American multiculturalism. Here, various cultures and their works on widely discussed. American condiment has mar countries and of course they were European colonies in the past. The culture of Mexicans red Indians and ‘white’ are presented with their mode of writers. This writer write about the way they were treated in past, the way they fought for the rights and the way they live theirs life or is Asian American writers. These, writers are migrates from Asian – sub – continent. The fourth one is postmodernism and popular culture. This part wildly discuss the term postmodernism, how the writers apply this terms – ‘the fifth is postcolonial studies’.

Through the study of various one becomes a better person with his whole heart.

New Criticism,Modernism,Post Modernism

NEW CRITICISM, MODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM

Name                          :           Bhumi Vajani

                                                M.A. – English Part – I

Sem.                            :           2

Roll No.                     :           04

Paper                          :           7- Literacy Theory & Criticism

Topic                          :           New Criticism

                                                Modernism

                                                Postmodernism

Submitted to              :           Dr. Dilip  Barad

                                                Dept. of  English

                                                M.K. Bhavnagar University

New Criticism, Modernism, Postmodernism

New Criticism :

          New Criticism came by the publication of John Crowe Ranson’s ‘The Criticism’ in 1941. It came to be applied to a theory and practice that remained prominent in American Literacy Criticism up to late 1960s. This movement has the influence I.A. Richards ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ (1924) and ‘Practical Criticism’ (1929) and from critical essay of T.S. Eliot. It apposed a prevailing interest of scholars, critics and teachers of that ear in the biographies of authors, in the social context of literature and in literacy history by insisting that the proper concern of literacy criticism is not with the external circumstances of effects or      historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity. Cleaner Brooks and Robert Prnn Warren ‘Understanding poetry’ (1938) and ‘Understanding Fiction’ (1943) did much to make the New Criticism the predominat method of teaching literature in American colleges. An influential English critic, F.R. Leavis, in turning his attention from background, sources and biography to the detailed analysis of “literacy texts themselves”, shared some of the concepts of the New criticism and their analytic focus an what he called ‘the words on the page.’

          The New criticism was extraordinarily inclination from the end of the 1930s on into the 1950. It is widely considered to have revolutionized the teaching of literature to have helped in the definition of English studies in the second half of the 20^th century. New criticism may be better described as an empirical methodology that was, at its most basic and most influential a reading practice.

Although it remains true that there was no typical new critic, there are key figures whose critical approaches were closely aligned with New criticism’s development and characteristics. As well as Ransom, Richards Brooks and Warren, other important figures are Allen Tate, Kenneth Burke, R.P. Blackman, William Empson, Yvor Winters and W.K. Wimsatt.

          In  ‘Biographia Literaria’ Coleridge claimed that poetry ‘brings the whole soul of man into activity’. This phase offen cited by the New critics was an important precursor of the New critical emuphasis combination of the intellectual and the emotional.

          New Criticism has been considered a conservative practice, whose origins demonstrate the covert and sub he aestheticization of the political. It is warth remembering this, as it helps explain the extreme hostility felt toward New critism by Frank Lentricchia and Terry Eagleten. ‘International fallacy’ and the ‘affective fallacy’ are two major textual approaches associated with New Criticism.

          New Criticism sets out to illuminate the organic unity of the overall structure and verbal meaning of a text. The words ‘Tention’, ‘irony’ and ‘paradox’ occure often in New Criticism. The degree to which a work of art achieve a “reconciliation of diverge impulses” or “an equilibrium of opposed farces” is a measure of its literacy value.

When contrasted with other critical theoretical positions, New Criticism may be considered ideologically problematic, theoretically unformulated, and unsystematic. But it none the less occupies a significant place in the development of modern literacy theory and English studies. The New Criticism mounted the first serious challenge to reductionist and impressionistic opproaches to literature, and with its emphasis on rigour and objectivity, it initiated the professionalization and formalization of literary criticism as a discipline. The New Criticism valued the texture of languages and paid scrupulous alternation to the structures within that languages functioned.

v    Modernism:

Modernism is the term that should be thoroughly understood in order to understand the 20^th century culture. Modernism is the name given to the movement which dominated the arts and culture of the first half of the 20^th century. The movement of modernism in arts brought down much of the structure of early 20^th century practice in music painting literature and architecture. Modernism (1890 – 1910) poses Vienna as centre but it spread in France, Germany, Italy and Britain too. This movement in art Cultism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Futurism. This movement is still felt today. Without understanding  modernism how can the culture be understood ? Traditional realism was rejected in favour of experimental farms of different kinds. High Modernism existed from 1910 to 1930. Some of the Modernisms are T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka. The ‘Modernism as a term is widely used to identity new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the twentieth century bus especially after words war I (1914-1918). The characteristics of Modernism differs from one user to another user but most of the critics agree  that Modernism includes a deliberate and radical break with some of the traditional bases not only of Western art, but of western culture in general some thinks procured Modernism. They questioned the certainties that had supported traditional moods of social organization religion and morality and also traditional ways of conceiving the human self. Thinkness such as friedrich. Nietzsech (1844-1900) Karl Marx, Freud, J.G. Graze, whose twelve – volume. ‘The Golden bough (1890-1915) stressed the correspondence between central Christian and Pagan, often barbaric maths and rituals.

Some literary figures locate Modernism revolt to 1890s but high Modernism, marked with rapidity of change, came after the first would war. After the first world, around Igzz James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, Eliot’s ‘The Wade Land’ and  Woolf’s ‘Jacob’s Room’ are experimented wares that came out.

A prominent feature of Modernism is the phenomenon called avant-garde (advanced gurd), that is a small, self conscious group of artists and authors who dellberately undertake in Ezra Pound’s phrase, to “make it new”.

Those writers broke all rules and regulation and peep into forbidden subject matters. They shocked the sensibilities of the conventional readers and to challenge the norms and pieties of the bourgeois culture. Peater Burger’s ‘Theory of the Anant – Grade’ (1984) is a neo – marxist analysis both of Modernism and of its distinctive cultural formation, the went garde.

Modernism was an aesthetic movement brought about by both a radical shift in consciousness and a violent transformation of social conditions in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The change in society was abrupt and violent. The capitalists became powerful. Political and economical power went in the hands of capitalists and land owners were devoid of the power which they owed previously, religion had control over people of the society and authorities. This was displaced by enlightenment humanism. People become fully conscious and rational. The immediate effects of the industrial revolution had been a process of urbanization whereby cottage industries and rural areas were swallowed up by the new, encroaching cities and the sense of belonging to a community of sharing a common social bond, was strained as individuals were shocked into anonymity, swallowed by the masses swarming though the cities. The Modern condition is represented by the term ‘alienation’. There is a hazard of noise. It’s the age of Informative Study. The sense of purpose and continuity that had previously held was ruined and fragmented. Modernism was a an artistic attempt to capture this sense of fragmentation and alienation.

The new ‘realism’ was one of experiment and immovation, genre distinctions were collapsed and challaged as poetry started becoming prosaic, and prose become poetic. Novelists such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and poets like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot revealed that the franmentary nature of modernity is always painful.

Modernism is a literature of mourning, forever, lamenting the tragic loss of the golden age of unity and belonging. One optimist thing is that truth and beauty are still visible in the art of Modernism, but only through the shifting surfaces of the shattered fragments shored against our rain.

Modernism was the art form which captured the experience of Modernity, During the twentieth century, however, the expressive theory of authorship came under sustained attach in the Modernist insistence on the so called impersonality of the poet, Pound undaaneted, he went on to become the unofficial ringleader of literacy modernism in London in the years 1908 – 1920 and eventually achieved a huge influence over modern poetic taste.

The phase of modern literature that we call ‘Modernism’ was marked not only with radical creative experiment but also by economics tic critical declaration and proscriptions issued by poets and novelist : that Milton was a wrathless poet (Pound) that Hamlet was an incoherent play (Eliot), that Arnold Bennet was not interested in people (Woolf) and that Hawtherone and Tolstoy were leans who evaded the aimer truths of their own works (D.H. Lawrence). The initial delight of Modernism lay party in its impatient demand for critical discrimination between the culturally living and the culturally, dead and so in its determination to cast aside cautions academic literary, history in favour of rewriting ‘tradition’ on its own terms. New liking developed for fragmented forms, discontinuous narrative  and random – seeming collages of disparate material. This shift leads to produce a literature which seems dedicated to experimentation and innovation. Modernism never regained it momentum when it returned in the 1960s.

v    Postmodernism:

Postmodernism become famous since 1980s.

          J.A. Cuddon – describes postmodernism as characterized by an electric approach, parody and pastiche.’

         

          One way of establishing the distinction between modernism and postmodernism is to dissolve the sequential link between them, by retrospectively redefining certain aspects of modernism as postmodernist. This means they are not two successive stages in the history of the arts, but two apposed moods or attitudes differ.

          The tern ‘postmodernism’ is often applied to the literature and art after world war II (1939-1945). Postmodernism involves counter traditional experiments of modernism post modernism in literature and the arts has parallels with the movement known as post structuralism in linguistic and literary theory’s post structuralisms tries to  find meaningfulness.

For postmodernism, the loss of unity is not something to be mourned but something to be celebrated. It is an announcement of freedom. The tragic becomes farcical, as the search for truth has been discarded with illusions. Thus post modernism’s aesthetic is not only fraclured and fragmented, it is flat. Opposing the surface model of modernism, post modernism’s art denies the possibility of depth, post modernism art seeks to deconstruct the previously held dichotomy between art and pop culture. Post modernism thrives on surplus and promiscus excess. It has no controlling, linear narrative, no predetermined goal or point of clause (tools) and its refusal of internal structural meaning legitimate all possible and potential meanings. Post modernism is anti art, it as a direct challenge to the authority of the expert, and claims to liberate creativity from the predetermined, central discourses of society. Just as modernism was the art form which captured the expeience of modernity, so post modernism is the art form that captural epoch which reflects the triumph of capitalism. Post modernism provided the best references Dick Hebidge, Jurgen Habermas, Terry Eagle ton and Christopher Norris have rallied and railed against the turn towards post modernism. It is a positive light. For Eagleton, post modernism is  a state of post radicalism.

         

          For French intellectuals 1968 is a crucial year and it is impossible to understand the pessimism, defeatism, and quiestism inherent in post modernism without at least some understanding of this historical moment. Post modernism is in many ways, part of the harvest sown in the 1960s. The signs of betrayal and stings of disillusionment have never really headed. But it, in the eyes of Lyotard and his contemporaries, 68 revealed itself as a failure of the revolutionary aims, it was also a triumph for cultural leftism. It the big picture is unchangeable, if the centre is unassailable, then localized strategies of resistance become the only pragmatic option.

         

          Bauman asserts that the move from modernism is post modernism occurred when modernism’s doubt that the evidence is as yet incomplete, that ignorance has not yet been toppled, gave way to the second, always present, always repressed doubt that opened the way to post modernism.

          The problem with post modernism no matter how you approach it, is that both its radical potential and its structural in ability to achieve that potential are undeniable. As a philosophy, it leads to title more than a sterile skepticism. Post modernism offers space for the unlimited potentialities and marginal position to be explored. To achieve anything from the post modernism experience, however the cycle should be broken to act. Post modernism plays an importance role in building up the contradictions in the master narratives and power discourses. It offers a moment of tension a temporary, provisional and always precarious middle ground that is used to see things in a different way. In the world of instant transmission and information overload, in a world where the speed of life has been accelerated, and the attention span compressed post modernism provides a welcome brake example an opportunity to decelerate and to freeze the time to fulfill the imitative and find the critical moment. 

Development of Prose in Victorian Age

Development of Prose in Victorian age.

Name                          :           Bhumi Vajani

                                                M.A. – English Part – I

Sem.                            :           2

Roll No.                     :           04

Paper                          :           6 - The Victorian literature

Topic                          :           Development of Prose in Victorian age.

Year                             :         2013

Submitted to              :           Dr. Dilip  Barad

                                                Dept. of  English

                                                M.K. Bhavnagar University

The Development of Prose in Victorian Age.

Introduction :

                   Victorian age follows Romantic age. It begins from 1833 and ends in 1900. This ‘age’ is one of the most glorious epochs in the history of England. It was an age of material affluence, political awakening democratic reforms, industrial and mechanicals progress, scientific, advancement, social unrest, education expansion, imperialism and empire building, humanitarianism, idealism, and all pervasive intensity of life. The Victorian scene unfolds a rich panorama of life in all its wide and varied branches – social, political, economic and literacy. It is one of the special features of the age that while it evoked feelings of warm appreciation and commendation in the hearts of many of its admirers it equally well roused the feelings of resentment and condemnation in others.

Carlyle Wrote :

“Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not heroically, devotional, philosophical or moral age, but above all others, the mechanical age. It is the age of machinery in every outward and inward sense of that ward; the age which; with its whole undivided might, forwards teacher and practices the great art of adapting means to evils. Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but by the spiritual also. Men, are grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand.”

Signs of the times by Carlyle

          Victorians laid great emphasis on order, decorum and decency –

“To talk of duly, honor the obligations of being a gentleman the responsibilities of matrimony and the sacredness as religious beliefs is to be Victorian.”

The advances made by new science were accepted by new science were accepted but the claims of old religion were not ignored. They took up a compromising position between faith of religion and doubt created by science –

“There remains more faith in honest – doubt Believe me that in half the creeds.”

The Victorian Age was rich in literacy output –

“Nearly all victorious wrote copiously and had little regard for eighteenth century ideals of terseness and epigrammatic point. The mounds of unsalable sermons and black bound homiletic writing which, even now make corners of second hand bookshops look like ossuaries remind us pungently of the special interests and demands of the special interest and demands of the expanding Victorian public.”

-  The Literacy scene by G.D. Klingopulos :

“The most striking characteristic of Victorian literary was its strenuousness, its conscious purpose. Both poets and prose – writers worked under the shadow and burden of a conscious social responsibility.”

- A history of English literature by Moody Lovett.

There is a note of revolt and denunciation against the growing materialism and mechanization of the age. In spite of the growing tendency of the writers to be interested in social and political life of the times, there was in Victorian literature a contribution of the old romantic thirst for beauty, love and art. It was customary to regards this age as an age of pessimism doubt and despair –

“It is spoken of as a prosaic age, looking in great ideals.”

The literature of this age was influenced by science.

“In fiction the scientific spirit is no less discernible, the problems of he reedit and environment preoccupying the attention of the novelist, writers like charlotte, Bronte, Dickers kingsley, and read, give place to point in biology, psychology, pathology. The influence of Herbert Spencer and of come meets us in the pages subtly followed in the fiction of George Eliot, the early writings of Mrs. Humphrey ward and the intimate Wesson studies of Thomas Hardy.”

- A history of English Literature by Cooption – Rickets.

The Victorian age is essentially the age of prose and novel. The novelists were freer because their aims were more limited and allowed a pragmatic approach.

Major Novelists :-

Charles Dickens :-

Life :

          Dickens was born near Partsea. At an early age he because very fond of the theatre and this fondness remained with him all his life and affected his novels to a great extent. He becomes reporter.

Ø  Sketches by B02 (1836)

Ø    The Pickwick paper (1836)

Ø  Oliver twist (1937)

Ø    Nicholas Nichleby (1938)

Ø  The old curiosity shop (1840)

Ø    American Notes (1842)

Ø  Martin Chuzzlewit (1843)

Ø    Donbey and son (1846)

Ø  Bleak House (1852)

Ø    Hard Times (1854)

Ø  A tale of two cities (1959)

Ø    Great Expectation (1960)

Our mutual friend (1964)

          His last, novel ‘The mystery of Edwin drood’ remained incomplete and his died.

Features :

          His novels were very popular. At the age of twenty six he was a popular author. The demands of this novel were very high and this led to lastly work which could not be considered properly his all books were rich and enduring. His all books were rich and enduring. His power of imagination was beyond comparison. Not even a single English novelist excelled him in the multiplicity of his characters and situations. His humor is broad, Humane, and creative. He could describe horrible, as the death of bill Sykes, he could be painfully dramatic as in the characters of Rosa Dartle and Madame defrags. His characters are created in the ‘flat’. His style is clear, rapid and resembles the style of journalists.

The example of peculiar Dickensian style is -

“A decidedly indelicate young gentlemen, in pair of wings and nothing else, was depicted as superintending the cooking, a representation of the spire of the church in longhand place, London, appeared in the distance, and the whole formed a “valentine”, of which as a written inscription in the window testified, these was a large assortment within, which the shopkeeper pledged himself to dispose of, to his countrymen, generally, at the reduce rate of one and sixpence each.”

- The Pickwick papers.

William Makepeace Thackeray : (1811-63) :

Life :

Thackeray was born at Calcutta. He contributed to prose and legend verse. He studied art and also contributed to periodical as journalists.

Same of his novels one:

Ø  The yellow plush correspondence (1837 – 1938 )

Ø    The book of Snoks (1949)

Ø  The Fitz boodle papers (1942-43)

Ø    The memories of Barry Lyndon (1844)

Ø  Vanity Fair (1847-48)

Ø    History of Pendermis (1848 to 1850)

Ø  The History of Henry Edmond ( 1852 )

Ø    The New comes ( 1853 – 55 )

Ø  The Virginians (1857 – 1859)

As an editor of the Cornhill magazine he wrote published as –

Ø  The English Humourists of the eighteenth century (1837)

Ø  The four Georges (1860)

Ø  His blursque work –

Ø  Rebecca and Rowena (1850)

Ø  The Legend of the Rhine (1845)

Ø  The Rose and the Ring (1955)

Features :

          When Dickens’s was enjoying his success Thackeray was struggling through neglect and contempt to rendition. He got success slowly. Once he had gained the favor of the public he held it and among outstanding English novelists there is none whose claim is so little subject to challenge.

          “Since the author of Tom Tones was buried” says Thackeray in his preface to pandemic, “No writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his almost power a ‘man’. We must drape him and give him a certain conventional simpler.” His certain conventional simpler. “His creations are rounded, entire, and quite alive and convincing. He depicted truth with the help of satire. In pathos he is sentimental. He style is effortless and of extraordinary degree.”

“Her eyes beamed out on him with affection indescribable, “Welcome”, was all she said as she looked up, putting back her fair curls and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed on her face: Harry thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her face was lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty – She did not quit Edmond’s arm.”

                                                                             - Henry  Esmond

3.      The Bronter :

          Life :

          Charlotte (1816-1855) family (1818-1848) and Anne (1820 – 1849) were from Yorkshire. The three sisters wrote for fun and they published look take different name and not original ones. Female writing was not given much importance in their time.

Charlotte  Bronte :

          She work had truth and intensity. Her plots were limited upto her experiences. She brought energy and passion which seemed wonderful and romantic. Her novels are

Ø  The Professor

Ø    Jane ryre (1847)

Ø    Shirley (1949)

Ø    Villette (1853)

v    Emily Bronte :

She wrote less than charlotte. Her one novel “Wuthering Heights” (1847) is unique in English literature. It depicts the passions of moor. She also wrote few poems. Her finest poems are –

Ø  No coward soul is mine

Ø    Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above three.

v    Anne Bronte :

She wrote two novels …

Ø  Agnes grey (1847)

Ø    The Tenants of Wild fell Hall (1848)

Compared to charlotte and Emily she lacked power and intercity in her work the were pioneers in the filed of romantic fiction in their concern with the human soul they were to be followed by George Eliot and Meredith. The following passage shows the quality of Emily Bronte’s work.

“My Great miseries in this world have been healthchieff’s miseries and I watched and fell each from the beginning. My great though out in living is her self. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue tube; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it my love for linden is line the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.’’

(4)     George Eliot :

Life :

Many an Evans was the real name of George Eliot. She was born near Nuneaton. She became a member of a literacy circle. In later life she travelled extensively and married (1880) J.W. Cross and died at Chelsea in the same year.

Works :

          George Eliot discovered her own was of writing fiction in the middle years of her life. She wrote:

Ø  Adam Bade (1959) :

Ø    The mill of the floss

Ø  Silas Marner – The weaver of Raveloe (1861)

Ø    Romola (1863)

Ø  Felix Holt the Radical (1866) :

Ø    Middle march, a study of provincial life (1871-72)

Ø  Daniel Dernda (1876)

Features :

          There is relatively few striking incidents in her novels, but her plots are skillfully managed. Her characters are usually drawn from the lower classes of society and her studies of the English countryman show great understanding and insight. She displays light humor. There are irony and moral earnest an in her novels. Her style is lucid & simple. Her speeches are ordinary and natural. Nature is present in the form of countryside description. Her novels deal with social, personal and psychological problems of ordinary people.

“She wakes to a new condition. She felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict, she was no longer wresting with her grief, but could now sit down with it as a lasting companion with her grief, but could now sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts for now the thoughts came quickly.”

- Middlemarch

(5)     George Meredith : (1828 – 1909)

          Life :

          He was born at Partsmoutg. He was a reader to a London publishing huge but slowly he was able to get the way for his own bolos. He died at his home at box hill, survey.

Poetry :

Ø  Poems (1851) :

Ø  Poems and lyrics of the joy of the joy of earth (1883)

Ø  Ballads and poems of tragic life. (1887)

Ø  A reading of earth (1988)

Ø  A reading of life, with other poems (1901) .

Novels :

Ø  The ordeal of Richard Fevered (1859)

Ø  Evan Harrington (1861) – Emilia in England (1864)

Ø  Rhoda Fleming (1865)

Ø    Vittaria (1867)

Ø  The adventures of Harry Richmend (1871)

Ø    The egoist (1879)

Ø  The tragic comedians (1880)

Ø    Diana of the Crossways (1885)

Ø    The Amazing marriage (1895)

Features :

          His language and style both are praised. His female character where given same importance as males. His style is fully matured. His novels are deep solid. His characters are amazing and accurately woven. For example –

“She had the mouth that smile in repose. The lips met full on the centre of the bow and trimmed along to a lifting dimple, the eyelids also lifted slightly at the outer corners and seemed, like the lip into the limpid cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of color.”

- The Egoist.

Other Novelists :

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881):

Ø  He was born in London. He gained seat in parliament. He wrote :

Ø    Vivan grey (1926-27) :-

Ø  The Vajage of caption Popanilla.

Ø    A psychology autobiography (1932) –

Ø    New generation (1844)

Ø  The new monthly (1929-30)

Ø    The wondrous tale of Alroy and the rise of Iskander (1833)

          His work dealt with fashionable society, His passages are full of decorum. In style the prose is inflated, but the later novels sometimes have flashes of real passion and insight.

Edward Bulwer – Lytton ( 1803 – 73 )

He had a long and successful career of a literacy man as well as a politician. He wrote –

Ø  Kalkand (1827) :

Ø    Paul Clifford (1830)

Ø  The last days of Pompeii (1834)

Ø    Roman Tribunes (1835)

Ø  My Novel (1853)

Ø    A strange Story (1862)

Ø  Money (1840)

          His book are full of the pictures of current society. The can be said to be immature in their affection of wit and cynicism.

3.      Charles Reade : (1814-1884) :

          He was born in oxfordshire. He was a successful man of letters. He died at shepherd’s Bush. He began with plays. His works are as under –

Ø  Marks and faces (1852).

Ø    Christie Johnstene (1853)

Ø  The cloister and the Hearter (1861)

Ø    Hard Cash (1863)

Ø  Griffith Gaunt or Jealousy (1866)

Ø    Foul Play (1868)

          He has the dramatic’s sense and gives striking scenes. Sometimes he becomes melodramatic while hi character lacks depth. He gives historical details in his work.

4.      Wilkie Collins :

          He is the successful followers of dickens. He was versatile. He specialized in the mysterious novel. Supernatural elements are present in his work. He wrote more than twenty five novels.

Some are :

Ø  The dead secret (1857) :

Ø    The woman in white (1860)

Ø  No name (1862)

Ø    The moonstone (1868)

5.      Robert Louis Stevenson : (1850 – 1894 )

          He was born at Edinburgh, His works are –

Ø  An Inland Voyage (1878)

Ø    The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1868)

Ø  Kidnapped (1886)

Ø    The Black Arrow (1888)

Ø  The Manster of Ballantrae (1889)

Ø  The Catrine (1893)

Ø  A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

Ø    Underwoods (1887)

Ø    Ballads (1890)

          He wrote gracefully. His finish was artistic. He had adventurous spirit. His most of the stories are interesting.

6.      Mark Twain :

Mark Twain was the pet name  of Samuel L. Clemers (1835-1910). He was born in Florida, Missouri. His work falls into there main classes –

(1)     Travel books                   (2)     Novels of Mississippi

(3)     Romances.

His works are

Ø  The adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

Ø    The adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Ø  Life on the Mississippi (1883)

Ø    The prince and the pauper (1881)

Ø  Joan or Ark (1896)

Twain Brock influence of European models in American literature. He was humorist. He did bitter satire. His best works are firmly based on reality. His works flows spontaneously with natural charm.

There are many major writers of this age apart from the discussed ones. I have tried to include important Victorian writers.

“With all its immense production the age produced supreme writer. It revealed no Shakespeare, no Shelly, nor a Byron as a Scott. The general literal level was, however, very high, and it was an age, moreover of spacious intellectual horizons noble Endeavour, and bright aspirations.”

- A history of English Literature by B.G. Albert.