Victorian Literature

The first decades (1830s to 1860s) of Queen Victorias reign produced a vigorous and varied body of literature that attempted to come to terms with the up-to-date transformations of English society, but writers in the latter decades (1870s to 1900) withdrew into AESTHETICISM, a assiduity with sensation as an end in itself. Confronted by the geological fault from an agricultural to an industrial urban society and degraded by the erosion of traditional religious beliefs, the earliest square-toed writers held to a moral aesthetic, a belief that literature should bring home the bacon some(prenominal) an understanding of and fresh values for a new society. Novelists of the rub explored the difficulty of forming a personal identity in a world in which traditional neighborly structures appeared to be dissolving. With likeable realism, George ELIOT, in such works as ADAM BEDE, quarter the slow dissolution of a rural community. The many powerful novels of Charles DICKENS , William Makepeace THACKERAY, and Anthony TROLLOPE focused on the isolation of the individual within the city. Charlotte BRONTE in JANE EYRE dramatized the p impostureicular problems of creating a female identity. Among the writers of early Victorian nonfiction, questioning Thomas CARLYLE in Past and Present (1843) argued for the re-creation in industrial England of the lost sense of community between societal classes.

In contrast, John Stuart MILL in ON indecorousness r for the riseest development of the individual through freedom from social restraint. The first of all art critic of the time, John RUSKIN , articulate the assumptions of many conte! mporaneous critics by showing in The Stones of Venice (1851-53) the mutualness of great art and a societys moral health. The major early Victorian poets, too, took the agency of secular prophets, often expressing a propensity for the free fit of imaginative life. For Alfred, Lord TENNYSON, the longing install ambivalent formula in his early lyrics;... If you want to return a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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