Literatura Inlgesa S. XIX UV, Apuntes de Literatura inglesa

¡Descarga Literatura Inlgesa S. XIX UV y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura inglesa solo en Docsity! ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE 19TH CENTURY 25.9.14 • Regency: at the beginning of the 19th century. • Fin de siècle: at the end of the 19th century. LITERARY PERIODS: CONCEPTS - Periodization: allows us to assume that there are different neatly cut-off stages. - Movement: some features in common between various authors. - Generation: an emphasis on chronology. - Literary period INTRODUCTION • With the French Revolution everything changes: broken with social classes this will change literature because there is a new public, new readers = new demands… So, writers not only would write about novelistic themes. They also would touch others points of view of the society. • Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792): as a response to Edmund Burke. This text is important because the ideas transmitted there were so crucial in the 19th century. • James Watt and Matthew Boulton: Steam Engine. It meant the development of the cities it gave more access to people to travel from one city to another: searching literature. Moreover, we had circulating libraries which were moving from one city to another, carrying books to people far from where they could access to them. • Cities gave different types of characters: some of them taking part in the development of new genres as the drunker, the working boy… (we see them in Charles Dickens’ novels) 26.9.14 Importance of French Revolution: • New characters • New stories • New genres • New stages • NEW SOCIAL CLASSES English countryside was transformed between 1760 and 1830. This is the reason why the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution are so important in the literature of the 19th. • Charles Dickens, “Hard Times” (1854) • Charles Darwin, “On the Origin of Species” (1859) In the 19th, sciences became a part of the culture. It started to form as we know them nowadays. • “Confessions of an English opius eaten” by Thomas de Quincey. • Giovanni Batista Piranesi (1720 – 1778), “The prisons of the imagination” • Henry Fusili, “The Nightmare” (1781) • The Angel of the House the proper high lady • Femme fatale A representation of the late 18th’s women: the DOUBLE vision of the woman • Caspar David Friedrich: “El monje a la orilla del mar” A man against nature. ROMANTICISM • Autobiographical tendency • Faith in the self (identity) • The writer doesn’t objectify nature within a system or ideal but as a reflection of the self in order to make it an example of the self, a challenge or alienation. • Nature = not something concrete, it is abstract. ▲ Ford Maddox Brow, “Work” • Changes in social classes: difference between high class and working class. ▲ The Chartist’s demands (late 19th’s men) • Vote for all men. • Equal electoral districts. • Abolition of the requirements that Members of Parliaments be property owners. • Annual general elections. • Secret ballot. SOCIAL LITERATURE • Florence Nightingale, “Cassandra” (1852) • John Stuart Mill, “On the Subjection of Women” (1861) 3. Persecution more popularity d. 1855: 1. Abolishment of Stamp Duty. • Improvement in printing technology. • Expansion of railway after 1830. • New rooms and coffee houses multiplied • Because of the explosion and the success of the entertainment. • New mass-circulation newspapers: • Sunday newspapers: left-wing • Penny weeklies issued for factory hands. • 1830s-60s: pornographic papers and guides to London low life (The Town, Peeping town, Sporting and Police Gazette, Newspaper of Romance) • Common element: crude sensationalism. • It will important because it an easy way to get to people, a way to criticize penny literature. • 1840s: some of the penny public began to serialize romances. If you were literate and if you have how to pay it, you would be able to read. We didn’t only have news on newspapers also reviews about some novels. For instance: Shakespeare’s reviews. EFFECTS IN SOCIETY • Increase of number of readers. • Increase of access to knowledge. • Threat to patriarchal set of values. 3.10.14 THE WOMAN QUESTION Origins: Ideology • Doctrines from the French Revolution: liberty, liberal ideas. • Economic changes from the Industrial Revolution: new roles to women within home. Pioneer women: • Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” • Hannah Moore: teaching wild children of the Cheddar Hills. She was a moralist, a philanthropist and an idealist. She was famous for give education to boys and girls of the parishes. She was really conservative and she still believes in the job of women at home. However, she was bringing the idea of the importance of women in society. • Jane Austen, Harriet Martineau, Caroline Norton… Jane Austen: She puts women as main characters of her novels. Her novels are romances and reviews, films… People take her novels as romances, although we have to realise that she was a satirical author. Harriet Martineau: a socialist of that time and conservative because she believed in the original inclination of women (a natural tendency: motherhood). But she believes in an academic education to women. Caroline Norton (early and middle 19th): She wanted to achieve more rights to work mothers, rights of married, divorced women and the situation of women as slaves. She was accused of having pernicious conversations outside her marriage. She divorced and went to Europe with her sons. • Concept of: strong – minded woman. The middle woman of the century asked for the access to knowledge, to vote, smocking in the streets. Governesses considered as strong-minded women because they were educated and provided education. They were deemed not really pretty, with manly features, dressed in black. • “Determined” The new woman of the late 19th: in sense of independency, choosing her husband, voting. They had the same rights of men since a simple thing as get dressed comfortable clothes from to rights to vote, working, academic situation. CONCEPT OF COVERTURE: A woman until 1881 when she was married she was as an extension of her husband but she was covered by the rights, the protection of the man. • “Commentary on the Laws of England” “By marriage,…” CONTEXT SPHERES (MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES) • Public sphere: everything that happened outside home, having political voice, a work… More importance the man for the political opinions. • Private spheres: domestic duties, education, conduct books, taking care of the education of the children WORKING POPULATION • Lower rates • Physical abuse (beating with a stick not thicker than a thumb) DATES - 1836: Caroline’s Norton affair - 1839: The Talfourd Law: if you are a divorced woman who was not committed adultery, you would have the custody of her children fewer than seven with rights to access to their elder children at stated times. Many cases of divorce of the 19th were due to an affair of the woman. - 1847: The Ten Hours Act = the hours of work for women and young persons were limited to 10 per day. - 1847: The first time that it is considered to give a certificate to governesses recognizing her as a profession. - 1848: Founding of Queen’s College for Women in order to teach “all branches of female knowledge”. We have an attempt to education but not an equal education. -1848: First Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. The onset of the feminist movement as an organization. - 1849: Founding of Bedford College for the education of women. - 1850: North London Collegiate School (Frances Mary Buss. Shes fights for a high education of women) - 1851: Petition on favour of female suffrage. - 1855: First regular feminist committee: Barbara Leigh Smith. She belongs to a high society and she creates the Langham Place Circle which it is important for fight for rights of women and a high education. - 1857: The Marriage and Divorce Act was passed. A civil contract outside the church. Women would be able to ask about the properties that belong them. - 1866: Petition for Women’s Suffrage presented in the Parliament. -1870: Local lectures to women in Cambridge. - 1858 – 1873: Women doctors and Elizabeth Blackwell. She was the first English woman that appears as doctor in England. - 1870: Women’s Protest (prostitution) The Ladies National Association for the review of Contagious Diseases Act: first organized political committee by women (1869 – 1870). It fought against the Contagious Diseases Act in 1. GOTHIC NOVEL - World of good and evil. - The ‘castle’ as chronotope (literary fusion of space and time) - Architectural antiquity (cathedral, …) - Villain and suffering heroine - Overwrought language. - Shock of the new related to sensation novel - Foreignness located outside not in the city - Heroes and heroines imprisoned in strongholds with secret chambers. In the female literary gothic, women would be more active. This period starts in the middle 18th to early 19th. Example: “The Mysteries of Udolpho”, Anne Radcliffe (1794) “The Castle of Otranto”, Horace Walpole (1764) He started with this genre. He was constructing a castle himself and it started to use this castle to start to write as the main focus using: villain, heroines, chambers … (Pg 31 “The Mysteries of Udolpho”) CHARACTERS: • Emily st. Aubert: female heroine. • Valan Court: the lover. • Count Morano: the man who Montoni wants to marry with Emily. • Signor Montoni: villain. • Annette: secondary character. Setting: 16th It is first located in French and then in Italy. Plot of the first passage: there is a picture covered by a black veil. Emily wants to know what would stay under it but Annette doesn’t want to say her. Mysterious of both characters. Idea of foregrounding the fact of saying all the time how she explains but it doesn’t say it until the end (the idea of repetition) How does she build suspense? Through uncertainty. She uses reason in order to explain supernatural elements. (PAGE 34. VOLUME 2 – NOTES IN THE BOOK) 17.10.14 JANE AUSTEN (1775 – 1817) • She receives education from their parents (father – brothers). • She waited for a boarding school. • Her social fears were the gentry (burguesía) • She portrayed this world ironically, she isn’t making politics. • Plot: the socialization of these families, the focus: the marriage as a civil institution no as a happy ending in sense of love. The emphasis isn’t in the love plot. Marriage = stronghold of institution. • Development of heroine (a female character). • A Memoir of Jane Austen written by her nephew James Edward Austen – Leigh. It is considered the best biography of her, instead of he was not a famous writer. (1869) Page 35 TEXT 2 • She takes the basic elements of the Gothic. • Satirical author, satirical elements. She is satirizing the society of the epoch (mirror) • She wants to mirror to human. • A change of perception between text 1 and text 2. • More presence of the eye narrator the voice of the narrator is evaded in Gothic. • Radcliffe gave long descriptions of the setting but in Austen we have a detailed description of the character, their attitude. She gives more emphasis on the dialogue, how they interact. • She is criticizing the whole society and men who diminished the value of Gothic novels. Catherine Morland is the heroine; she is going to live with The Alliens and they take her to the place where people of the time socialize (Bath). In this place, she met Henry Tillney and Isabella. (A first relationship between her and Catherine). Then Eleanor Tillney is the sister of Henry. Death of a familiar of Tillney: related with Udolpho in the castle (Radcliffe). VICTORIAN GOTHIC ROMANCE • All the settings outside become the English home. All the suspense happens inside. Domestic life, domestic sphere. • Romance in sense of narrative not in sense of love itself. Examples: • Emily Brönte, “Wuthering Heights” (1847) • Charlote Brönte, “Jane Eyre”. She became a teacher. Emily Brönte only wrote one novel and it was one of the best novels in the 19th. They receive education at home (her and her sisters) but they also went to a boarding school. She hadn’t a good time at school. The three sisters liked to invent stories together: a collection of poems called “A collection of poems written by Currer Bell, Ellis Bell and Acton Bell” (their pseudonyms) in order to veil the gender of the writers. An important thing of “Wuthering Heights” is the frame narrative. We have two settings: Thrushcross grange and Wuthering Heights and the stories of 2 families: The Earnshaw and The Lintons. The relation between them is complex. • How the love story between Heathcliff and Catherine goes on (BASIC plot) The frame narrative: Lockwood Multi – layered narrative voice: the inheritors of the two houses tell Nelly the story and Nelly tells it to Lockwood. All of them have voice but in different layers. PAGE 40-41 TEXT 3 Here, it is important who says what. However, the location isn’t as much important as in Gothic (Udolpho). The main difference is the changing of the location from the late 18th to the 19th. They tried to set up a school together but the Project failed NELLY: AMA DE LLAVESX X X X TEXT 1st passage Setting: the secret chamber within the house. 2nd passage: A description again. 3rd passage: A description of the Lady. “Robert fell back immediately” sensation A blond girl with blue eyes. • Complex phrases; a lot of details in order to arrive to the climax (sensation) 4th passage: He is acting as a detective “Robert Audley walk……. The history of Lucy Graham. Allusion to newspapers. 30.10.14 Strategies for gender studies to challenge19th literary canon: • Bring to our attention writers hitherto forgotten or marginalized: • Literary history written taking into account their stories. • Expansion of the canon (E.g. new woman writing) • Proposing new frames of reference for revaluing/rereading canonical works: • Differences between male and female Gothic fiction. ✓ Female representing patriarchal oppression (Anne Radcliffe’s novels) ✓ Male representing femme fatales and fantasy (Dracula) LITERARY HISTORY It is easy to fall in clichés as all women were rejected but this isn’t true. Not all of them were rejected. Throughout the 19th century, it took place the achievement of some women writers like: Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Bröntes… The reasons for high visibility of women are: • Large scale changes in literary culture. • Development of a mass literary market (women as readers). • Growth of periodical literature: it is easy to read novels because they were published in some newspapers, magazines and so on. • Emergence of a new class of professional writers. This offered some women economic independence. For instance: Caroline Norton. Prejudices against women’s writing = exclusion from the literary canon in first half of 20th. The reasons for these prejudices were: - Women only fit for a short range of topics: E.g. Romance and domestic life. - Women lacking experience for more serious topics: E.g. Thomas Gisborne believed in the divide order of the society. “Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex” men = efforts of mind, comprehensive reasoning… while women = modesty, delicacy, sympathizing sensibility. Some women writing under male pseudonyms to gain respectability: • George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. She is important because she wrote realistic novels and she is well-known for her style in psychological characters. • Elizabeth Gaskell is well-known for portray rural life. She published her 1st novel, “Mary Barton” anonymously. • Amy Levy (1861 – 1889): Newnham and Girton two colleges where she went. They were the only colleges opened for women. She attempted to make the gendered notion of feeling a standard by which all literature should be judged. (How we feel when we read a kind of literature?) A work’s literary value is defined in terms of its ability to foster a mode of reading which engaged feeling and not intellect alone. So, new women and men writing and new frame references were put in the new canon. FIELDS OF ACTION • Poetry • Fiction • Drama • Non – fiction novel • Literary criticism Examples: • “Arachne” by Rose Terry Cooke in The Star (a newspaper). 1881. • “Penelope – Up – to – Date” by Susan Carpenter in Womanhood (a magazine). 1889. • “Woman and Democracy” by Julia Wedgwood in Woman’s World (1888). Influence of choice of print media: • Periodical press vs. single-authored book. • Periodical press: • Disposable nature of the medium. • Anonymity. • Subject matter. E.g. women’s and children’s magazines. (PAGE 20) JULIA GODDARD (1825 – 1896) • One of her first’s writings was “Karl and the six little dwarfs”. It has put on the canon of children literature. • She didn’t receive education outside her house. • 1876: she created a literary prize for young people. • With the text (pg20), she challenged genres (an attempt) • It was published on Young England, a newspaper. • In the intro, she says she does it for home entertainment. Proserpine = explanation of the creation of the seasons. = relation between mother & daughter. (PAGE 51) • Another example of an attempt of changing genres. As a way for understanding how women challenged genres. • The author is playing with a deceleration of the narrative. There is not a happy ending. She is explaining the situation. • Women writing trying to challenge boundaries. (PAGE 52-53) Elizabeth Corbett • Female Utopias: a reaction against political movements which put women in respectable positions. • Here, we’ve got imaginative places in which women imagine that these places are ruled by women. This text is within the genre. It is a reaction/response against the article “Appeal against female suffrage” which appears in the magazine “Nineteenth – century magazine” (1889). Basically, this text said that women didn’t need to vote because they were covered by men. • Alice doings in elf-land It is not an idealized book and it hasn’t a moral lesson. The problem is that it was considered as an example of children’s fiction but there weren’t those features. In these moral intentions of children’s fiction, we have adults taking care of the education of children. These figures as modules. The parents weren’t present on the book. Here, we have the stereotype of ORPHAN INGÉNUE, who has to provide for herself. Alice has to take care of herself. She is going to face with communicating of the critics of Wonderland. This would be the main problem to Alice We don’t have an adults figure in this novel. Alice = heroine She is well educated of a high-class family but she has her curiosity and adventure. She represents two figures: • Little angelical • Little demon Related to style: • Dream vision: it isn’t continuing with 1st person voice. We have 3rd person voice and because of that the reader goes on step forward from Alice because we have to understand Wonderland a little bit better than Alice (jokes, humour). • Her sister is reading children’s fiction to her but Alice gets bored a way to criticize this kind of fiction of the epoch. • WONDERLAND =”mond” fatale. WORLD FATALE full of threads. As we know, this book is related to many different readings: • As a way to understand sexuality. It is seen full of symbols and as an introduction to sexuality of the little girl. • Search of identity. Full of questions of identity. E.g. “who are you?” • Related to drugs Other characters: • The White Rabbit: search it in the Victorian web. • Cheshire cats: it is originate in England. He was born in Cheshire. They would be representing domesticity. • The duchess: the anti-maternal figure. Violence against the little baby. There is a criticism against the domestic role of Victorian society. ALICE & HUMOUR Alice is representing reason- The problem is to put reason into a world where adults behave as children. In the mad Tea Party all the things which Alice doesn’t understand because she finds adults but they are behaving as children which is illogical for Alice. • Lots of paradoxes. • The thing which starts the plot: we don’t have a traditional narrative/plot line. He uses juxtaposition of scenes and we could say that the white rabbit is the curiosity. 1ST EXAM PRACTICE In the Gothic novels, interiors are linked with danger. Threats come from within the house, within the family and within the self. The ever – mounting sense of danger that characterizes the genres depends on the continual revelation of unsuspected depths. • How do the selections in this topic suggest and exploit associations among these different kinds of interior? 6.11.14 HISTORICAL NOVEL, BILDUNGSROMAN & NEW CONDITION OF ENGLAND 4. HISTORICAL NOVEL Intellectual origins in Victorian England: • Awareness of the past: to produce copies and these massive copying copies caused the awareness/interest of the past. Part of the interest of historical characters. • Preoccupation with ancestry and descent: a way to define English by knowing our past. • Search for the transcendent which could resist the power of time: There is a need to grasp something transcendental. • Growth of the writing of history into a professionalized discipline. Not only for elite and high classes but also for working-class and popular literature. A difficulty was to create a language recreating periods and countries that have to be imagined as a result of this: “Good” and “Bad” historical novels. The precursor of this genre was Walter Scott in the earliest 19s. Although the first historical novel in English was “Castle Rackrent” by Maria Edgeworth (1800), a story about a family placed in the 18th, just a century before. Peak of production of this genre: • 1850s – 1860s: because of the concerns of the audience, of readers. • Decay • Revival in 1880s as ‘philosophical romance’ ‘Philosophical Romance’: love plots in order to reflect especial attitudes, upon the ideals of woman, of a specific stage. This appears in opposition to romantic novels. Its aim is to criticize some ways of society not to serve as a mirror. For instance, “The Scarlet Letter” has some points of this genre in sense of reflect especial attitudes upon the ideals of a woman. CRITICISM ON THE HISTORICAL NOVEL • George Lukács: ‘classic form of writing’ / Walter Scott. • Modern criticism: dynamic form changing throughout the century touched by and infiltrating other genres such as romance, Gothic, melodrama, satire, farce & tragedy. It says that this genre tended to be hermetic. WRITERS OF THE GENRE • Walter Scott: “Waverly” (1816), “Rob Roy” (1817), “Ivanhoe” (1819). • Edward Bulwer Lytton: “The Last Days of Pompeii” (1832). This novel was massively adapted to stages. • Charles Dickens: “A Tale Of Two Cities” (1859) • George Eliot: “Middlemarch” (1872) • William Thackeray: “Vanity Fair” (1848) 5. BILDUNGSROMAN - First applied to Goethe’s “Wilhem Meister’s Lehrjahre” (1975) - “Wilhem Meister’s Apprenticeship”: it is to indicate its focus as a novel about human development and formation. - Used in 1803 by Karl Morgenstern and widely promoted by Wilhem Dilthey in 1870 and 1906. - Alternate terms to the genre: • Novel of growing up/novel of growth • Novel of education • Novel of development • Novel of self-development • Novel of socialization • Novel of formation • Main topics: political corruption and social discontents. • Characters: from aristocracy and lower classes The beginning of the novel “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”. One of the most well-known beginnings as “En un lugar de la mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme”. All the time he is showing the parallelism, the duplicity between France and England, social class: an analysis of the differences between them. In the last paragraph, he hasn’t get talked about the plot but he is coming early. 7.11.14 THOMAS HARDY, “JUDE THE OBSCURE” • Criticism against education, marriage as a social institution. • Fear from society and the constitution of marriage. • Dullness of his novels, tragedy. Baillial college was one of the most elitist institutions. So, we have Marx criticism against education. THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928) He spent in the Country of Wessex. His most famous and controversial novels were: • “Jude the Obscure” • “Tess of the D’ubervilles” (1891). Lady seduced by man. Characters are based on people of Wessex. He belonged to middle-low classes and his father was a constructor. He was mostly self-taught, he studied as an appendix of architecture but he realized that his life was literature. So he went to London and become acquainted and getting involved of ideas of social criticism from John Stuart Mill. His writing was considered not fluid but cryptic: • Characters based on real life people of Wessex topographical concrete novels because of they are setting in a concrete place. • Dialogue: at some point, his novels have been criticized as unreal, so cryptic, unnatural, and unrealistic because of his idea of erudite. • Gloomy style: sense of gloom, dullness, sense of tragedy all over the narrative. • It wasn’t a plot with linking ideas, not a clear unity of the plot. It was like a juxtaposition of scenes as brush-strokes. “JUDE THE OBSCURE” Characters: • Jude Fawley, the male main character of bildungsroman. • Arabella Donn, femme fatale. • Sue Bridehead. • Richard Phillotson, a teacher. He is the person who everybody wants to become someday. He is the intellectual in the novel Jude got marry with Arabella but this marriage ends up and he fell in love with Sue, his cousin. The link between both novels: • “A Tale of Two Cities” historical novel, social novel: criticism of society, bildungsroman because of the development of the hero. • “Jude the Obscure” social novel, bildungsroman 7. OPIUM & NEWGATE FICTION TO DETECTIVE FICTION OPIUM NOVELS • Influence of drugs and opium. How did influence these addictions to the literature of the century? On stories of Sherlock Holmes, it appears the opium dens. They are related with the net-work of street workers, obscure characters of society cliché image. But not only have these classed, also high classes. • Temperance: a movement which move people to deal their problems with alcohol. • Temperance spinster: spinsters fighting against their addiction to alcohol. ADDICTION IN 19TH • Roman times: relationship between the lender and the debtor. • 17th: devotion to a pursuit or a habit. Firstly appeared the term addiction as this idea. • 19th: devotion, people were addicted to writing letters, to botany… • Late 19th: it included drugs. = pejorative connotations • Alcoholic inebriety, morphine inebriety, opiomania, etheromania. • The society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety (1880s) 17th and earliest 19th = the term was attributed to hobbies. Before were good habits but tat the end of the century the notion of addition would acquire pejorative connotations. CONCEPT OF HABITS • Early Romantic writers: • Habit could be a productive made of mental life. • Ritual ingestion of substances offered altered mental state for inspiration. • Late Victorian society: • Bad habits were manifestations of disease. • Drug habits considered a problem rather than an eccentric pleasure. Opium as romantic inspiration: • “Kubla Khan” (1816) by S.T. Coleridge. • Sensational account of pleasures of opium “Confessions of an English Opium Fater” by Thomas de Quincey (1821). • Opium related to criminal underworlds: “The Picture of Dorian Grey” (1891) and Sherlock Holmes stories. Alcohol was considered as a disease which had spread through society. In theatre, plays also reflected the addiction’s problems on stage: • “Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life” (1828) • “Gin” (1880) In these plays we have the clichés: • Drunken man precedent of lower classes • Opium related with Gothic Fiction novels, in order to organized secret places of mind, and Confessional narratives in order to 1st person narrator: “I have experienced…” NEWGATE & DETECTIVE FICTION Crime fiction = appealing topic. As it was successful, it received attacks and critics. Newgate novels name of an authentic well-known prison to describe fiction that focused on crime, criminals and lower-class life almost upon the appearance of the 1st important work in the genre “Paul Clifford” by Edward Bulwer – Lytton. Detective fiction a term coined in 20th. EXAMPLES OF HOW NEWGATE FICTION WOULD BE TRANSMITTED • Newgate Calendar (from 1773) • Broadsheets: bigger newspapers. • Penny dreadful: little notes, more cheaply. • Shilling Shockers: more expensive. • Novels. NEWGATE FICTION TO DETECTIVE FICTION, BUT HOW? • They provide a lot of information of the performance which help us to know more things about them. ACTOR – MANAGER SYSTEM Bram Stoker defended it. • Idea of an actor promoting himself. • The actor taking the leading role of the company. They would be the one who rules, who chooses the plays. It is a system of managing theatres in which the leading role was taken by the leading actor/actress. For women, this wasn’t seen very respectable. Some of the benefits were: • Selecting the best plays for your company, for yourself. • Nobody chooses for you. *Look page 97 of the book. Also, we had transversal roles or breeches roles in 19th. What’s that? This occurs when we have a woman performing a paper of man. That was because male audience wanted to see something that they didn’t see on streets. Things like short skirts, showing the knees of the women, and so on. Obviously, this wasn’t respectable for women. AUDIENCES PAGE 99. The audience saw reflected themselves in the mirror which was the stage. This was an innovation in order to get people’s attention, just spectacle. STAGING Of course there were theatre for high class and others only for lower classes but there were mixing theatres in which you were sit closer to the stage = high class; further sittings = lower classes • The kind of theatre was so gestural because actors don’t have microphones and they had to get the attention of the audience in some way. THEATRICAL PATENTS PAGE 102. • Influence of technology. (Industrial Revolution) • Gothic, romance landscapes. “Electra in New Electric Light” Tragedy made comic because of the introduction of lights and technology. It was based on a valley in which Electra appears in the centre illuminated with electric lights. Most of the problems were due to the stages of 19th were made up of wood. So, they could be burnt. ACTING EDITIONS There was a mass phenomenon and most of the plays weren’t published because of the fact that everything had to pass a censure. “The Office of the Lord Chamberlain”: the writer, the copyist or the manager had to send a manuscript of the script to that office and the Lord Chamberlain was the censor. He decided what can be put on stage and what could not. • Webster’s Acting National Drama Series” (1837 – 1852) • Thomas Hailes Lacy(1848 – 1873) • Dick’s Standard Plays (until 1890s) • Readership: • Performers in the provinces and amateurs. • Minor theatre companies • Enthusiasts. • Poor quality paper, small type, cheaply priced. 21.11.14 GENRES OF THE THEATRE 1. BURLESQUE • Definition on page 110 • Development since 18th until 19th (108 - 109) • Highest peak of the genre: 1830s to 1960s. Then there was a division. We have a developed genre on a full length; breeches roles will appear a lot and this genre as we know nowadays began in earlies 70s. • Fall of the genre due to the attempt of make it more length. We don’t have to need an only source for a text (hypotext). • We won’t have heroes anymore but ordinary people. Heroes would be portrayed with ordinary and common features. In burlesque, we have lower characters. • Emphasis on the fact that in 19th we had taxis and technological advances. Mixture of past and contemporary events: the king living in a palace but the protagonist taking a taxi or a bus. • We have a comic conversation between the squeleton and the character. • Advances after Industrial Revolution which might be exposed to the audience. • Sight gags: visual jokes and fame for entertain the audience (Benny Hill) • Soliloquies not anymore (to be or not to be) but songs in order to make funnier the play. VICTORIAN SHAKESPEARE BURLESQUE • Transgressive theatrical practice. • Parodies of specific actors, productions, methods of mise en scène (puesta en escena), but also the pomposities of the official Shakespeare culture big costumes, gestural acting style. • Familiarity (time of production). The main problem was the access to the texts due to they weren’t published so there were only the manuscripts. Other problem was the difficulty to put on scene that, because people wouldn’t understand the ‘new sense of humour’ of plays Idea of hypotext. EXAMPLES • Richard Gurney, “Romeo and Juliet Travestry” (1812) • “Otello Travestrie” (1813) • J. Stirling Coyne, “New Grand, Historical, Bombastical, Musical and Completely Illegitimate Tragedy to be called Richard III”(1844) • W.R.Snow “Hamlet the Hysterical, a Delirium in five Spams”(1874) • W.S.Gilbert, “Rosencratz and Guildenstern” (1874) • A thin slice of Ham Let! (1863) VICTORIAN CLASSICAL BURLESQUES This was based on burlesques based on classic mythology, Greek and Roman themes. EXAMPLES • E.L.Blanchard, “Antigone Travestrie” (1845) • Robert Reece, “Prometheus; or the Man on the Rock” (1865) • F.C.Burnand, “Helen or taken from the Greek” (1866) Only high classes study and read in Latin but this classical burlesque were attended of every kind of people. Classics weren’t available everywhere. So, in order to be more educated, • Not standardized but generally ‘non-realistic’. • Stance and gesture used to heighten the emotional subtext of melodrama. Speech and gesture go together with music. • Sometimes supported by incidental music which gave a vividly attitude to the play. Romantic Supernatural Domestic elements: These 3 elements were put together in melodrama. Types of Victorian melodrama: • Domestic • Nautical: related to army… • Gothic • Eastern = colonies: exoticism, threads coming from exotic places. Villain coming from there to conquer the Empire. • Sensation CHRONOLOGY From the 1820s, we have a massive interest and expectation by working classes because they saw problems performed on stage, with distance. • 1820S: • Spectacles and presence of a fantasized East. • Short duration as sharing the bill with other entertainments. • Late 1820s: • Introduction in minor theatres of proletarian characters who become protagonists. • 1830s – 1840s: • Flourishment of the genre in non-patent theatres. (Illegitimate theatres). • Addressed to working classes and lower-middle classes Response to Reform Bills. • Addressed to middle-class bourgeoisie: ✓ Attempt to gain respectability ✓ Period dramas ✓ “Richelieu” (1839) by Edward Bulwer Lytton. • 1850s – 1860s: Changes due to innovations by Dion Boucicault • Concerned with theatrical effect, the spectacularity. • Identified with sensation melodrama: obsessed with modernity and current technology. • Longer dramas: 5 act with a sensation episode closing the fourth act. • ‘She - melodramas’ (Agnes Robertson): she was married with Dion. So, he dedicated most of his plays to women topics in order to his wife and his lovers could perform them. • 1870s: Villain still a force in melodrama yet emergence of ‘the divided hero - villain’ • Related with temperance melodrama but more related with domestic stability and health. • More interested in human psychology: inner selves. • “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1890s), an adaptation by T. Russell Sullivan. VIDEO: “Lost in Limehouse” (1933). About the last play mentioned. 28.11.14 Douglas William Jerrold (1803 - 1857): the father of nautical melodrama. His father was an actor. He was very familiar with the ideas and structure of the army. “Black Eyed Susan” is one of his most well-known works. Some authors like him look for a more nationalist theatre NAUTICAL MELODRAMA: • Factors: Charles Dibdin’s songs, related to army of the sea; aquatic drama at Sadler’s Wells, there is a big tank where performed battleships; theatre’s tribute to British naval supremacy. • Stage tributes to Lord Nelson in 1805/6 • The Battle of Trafalgar re-enacted on stage with miniature ships on Sadler’s Wells. • Surrey, Sadler’s Wells and Pavilion Theatre staging nautical dramas. • Craze for nautical drama reached its peak in the 1830s yet staging until the 170s at the Pavilion. “Black Eyed Susan” (1829) • Based on famous old balad by John Gay. • It inspired a long tradition of marine melodramas and burlesques: CHARACTERS: Primary: Susan and William Secondary: Doggrass and Crosstree (uncle’s Susan who is in love with her). In this novel, it is reflected the situation of women while expecting their husbands who are in the war. Families waiting to see what happened in battles throughout this kind of melodrama. Everybody in the novel was like ‘poor Susan’. 1826 1829 first performing of the play. 2.2. COMEDY - Early 19th failed to produce good comedies - Gilbert Abbot À Beckett - Various styles: • Poetic romantic comedy: love plots. • Sentimental comedies: not in the sense of love but plays showing moralities, moral precepts. Many of the plays were set abroad: adopted from French and fear of bringing scenes too close to actual English life. • Humour obscured by sentimental affection. • Influential author: Dion Boucicault. What happens in the late 19th comedy? • Use of historical drama to provide colour to farcical situations. • Realms of melodrama/comedy – farce: • E.g. theme of married boredom: George Henry Lewes “A Cozy Couple” (1854) • Old School: focused on drama of the 1830s – 1860s • E.g. Henry James Byron (representative of the popular tastes) ✓ Lack of creation of character and inventive power in ‘serious plays’ (artificial character, self-repetition…)/ stock roles. ✓ Paucity of plot material ✓ Popular humour in burlesque In comedies, we have the influence of burlesque’s tradition. • Reform of the theatre of by Thomas William Robertson: • Role of women • Creation of social classes in England • Social and economic issues debated • New tastes of the audience in the 20th CONTEMPORARY RECEPTIONS “Ruddigore, or the Witch’s Curse” by William Schwenk Gilbert (1887) • First performed at the Savoy Theatre in London (1887) • Main characters: • Rob: hero character who fell in love with Rose • Rose: the main female character. She has two lovers: Rob and Richard • Mad Margaret; she is mad because of the rejection of his lover when she was young (similar to Ophelia). Rose was performed with virtuous gestures as we have seen in melodrama. END OF THEATRE 5.12.14 19TH POETRY 1. ROMANTIC POETRY 1st GENERATION (early Romantic poets): • William Blake • William Wordsworth • Samuel Taylor Coleridge 2nd GENERATION (later Romantic poets): • Lord Byron • Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Keats Other less known as Leigh Hunt, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, etc. Late 18th = French Revolution = changes We have to think about Romanticism in sense of as a response to all these changes caused by French Revolution. During Romanticism, we have a natural landscape in which we see the inner of the person, not only there was science. This period of early Romantic authors was from 1780s and 1830s. It was related to: • Poetry of consciousness/reflective subjectivity: inner issues as a response of external things. • Cultural inquiry: questions of society. • National fantasy • Socio-political critique • Poetry of the self and natural We have to think in nature in terms of how do I feel when I am in a natural landscape? William Blake used imagination and nature to criticize the world where he lived. 1st GENERATION: WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) He was educated at home. At the age of 10, he enrolled in a drawing school and 4 years later, he started to work for an engraver. In his 20s, he started to study in the Royal Academy of Arts. He was a rebellious and religious person and with a sensitive nature: he draws and writes (painting and poetry). Emmanuel Swedenburg was a philosopher who influenced William Blake. He thought very much in heaven and hell as opposites, so he believed in the split of the world. His poetical works: • “Poetical Sketches” (1783) • “Songs of Innocence” (1789) • “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (1789-1794) • “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” and “A Song Of Liberty” (1790-1793) “Songs of Innocence” • Using the hymnological tradition (as little songs), he would portrait the ideal innocence of human being but this could be corrupted. When the souls are corrupted, we pass to adults’ world. He is talking about heaven and hell as contemporary things. He shows the two contraries states of the human being. CONTRARIES NOT OPPOSITES. • The lamb complementing the tiger and the other way round. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) His poetical works: • “Lyrical Ballads with a Few Other Poems” (1789) • “The Prelude” (1799) • “Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems” (1800). 2 volumes • “Lyrical Ballads with Pastoral and Other Poems” (1802) 2 volumes With “Lyrical Ballads”, the author used a language more simplified in order to make his poetry closer to the common people. This wasn’t welcome by Coleridge. “The Prelude” was divided in two parts: • 1805 13 books. First revision • 1850 14 books. Second revision and finished by his wife. The basis of the main topic: the history of the author within nature. • He went to college St. Johns in Cambridge. • During a trip to France, he met his wife. • His sister Dorothy was his best friend and she will be the interlocutor of many of his works. • In 1795, he met Coleridge but his addition to opium finished with their relation. They got married with two sisters, so, that addition gave problems within family, poetry, as friends… • The landscape of Lake District is so important in his works. It is where he found inspiration. • He was the poet of music • He visited two times Tintern Abbey (1793 and 1798) • He has revelation moments when he is in nature and he represents with expression times (“Five year have passed + pause) • When Wordsworth revised his poem “The Prelude”, he rewrote what he had written. He is re-experiencing his memories. • Miltonize making more rethorical. We see an example in “The Prelude”: E.g. 1st version 1805: “the moon looked down upon this show” 2nd version 1850: “the full-orbed moon, Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed Upon the billowy ocean” 12.12.14 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792 - 1822) His works: • “Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem” (1813) • “Ozymandias” (1817) • “Ode to the West Wind” (1819) • “A Defence of Poetry” (1821) HIS LIFE In order to understand his works we have to contrast them and his life with Lord Byron. • 2nd generation: individual, ego, “I” • Much more philanthropist: he was interested in helping other people, much + than himself CONTRARY TO BYRON • The son of the Country Squire: he had the bests of education. He went to University College in Oxford. • Thomas Jefferson Hogg friend from university. He introduced him to vegetarianism, free-love and atheism. They together wrote “The Necessity of Atheism”. They were too liberal for the system and they were expelled from university shock and break with his family. • 1814: he met William Godwin = father of Mary Shelley and husband of Mary Wollstonecraft. This fact was very important for him. He met Mary Shelley and they fell in love with her, and thus they eloped to Switzerland. They were together in Genova with Lord Byron, Polidori, and Claire Clairmont… • P .B. Shelley and Mary Shelley got married (explanation of her surname). But he drowned in the lake when she was only 24 • He was much more idealistic. He believed on the artist and the power of his imagination (ego =artistic production, not eccentric and egocentric approach of ego). Through this imagination, he believed that the poet could move walls ad change the world, not politicians. • Reason = superficial “Ozymandias” Younger Mennon, the author of the statue of Ramesses II, who was also called Ozymandias. This sculpture is in the British Museum. Some critics said that he was inspired by this statue and he discovery of it. It was 1st published in “The Examiner”, a liberal magazine. It is a sonnet divided in: ABABACDC EDEFEF = octets and sextets. • Dialogue of different arts (sculpture, writing, painting…) JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) His poetical works: • “Poems” (1817) • “Endymion: A Poetic Romance” (1818) • “The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) • “The Eve of St. Mark” • “Ode on a Grecian Urn” • “Ode to a Nightingale” • “Ode on Melancholy” He was the last of Romantic poets. His father died when he was 8 and his mother when he was 14 so he started to work as an appendix with a doctor. This developed within him an special sensibility, melancholy. • Ode = praising poems, praising somebody. • He took the romantic imagination of the poet alienated with reality. The romantic poet evading to the imaginary places, trying to find answers which weren’t in the real world = travel of the mind. • He introduces the romantic ode in this sense. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” The time of people who appears in the Urn has past but how can they survive? Through art. They are paralysed = paralysation of time. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (=La Hermosa dama sin piedad) • Representation of the image of the femme fatale. We have a knight who is seduce by the lady comes from medieval tradition • Form of the poem = BALLAD • Quartiers • Tetrameter and tritrameters iambic appearing alternated in the poem- 1820 • Sexualised scenes covered by shadows of medieval tradition. 2. VICTORIAN POETRY Taste for recovering the past linked with John Keats. ALFRED LORD TENNYSON (1802 - 1892) His poetical works: • “Poems by Two Brothers”, with Charles and Edward (1827) • “Poems Chiefly Lyrical” (1830) • “Maud” (1855) • “Idylls of the King” (1859) He had a continuous feeling of being mentally ill because all men of his family had mental diseases. Because of this, his poems reflected the mind working continually with the memory. He becomes a poet laureate. • Cambridge University. He met Arthur Henry Hallam and he impacted on Tennyson’s life. Until the point of writing “In Memorian” based on him passing of time, the insignificance of human being (1850) “Idylls of the King” • Arthuric legends = recovering the past • Metaphor of the Victorian Kingdom, of what was happening. • King Arthur = mainstream of Victorian ideals. • Difficulties that this kingdom is encountering through all its period. “Lady Shalott” • Written in 1832 and published in 1842. • Another example of medieval form, it was a ballad. • “Men and women” (1855): dedicated to his wife. Soliloquy: character thinking himself. Monologue: character addressing to an audience. HIS LIFE • He was educated at home. • He went to University of London. • 1830 He met William Macready, a very important actor, producer and manager. By meeting him, he tried to write as a playwright but he wasn’t so good. But he took elements of theatre and put them on his dramatic monologues. DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE • It also was a technique used by Tennyson. • The 1st author who coined this term was George Thornbury in 1857 but not until the 20th the form was fixed because we had dramatic lyrics, lyrical monologues and melodramas to refer to the same thing. ELEMENTS The form stems from the lyric, drama and narrative. It is a little bit of the 3 genres: ▲ Lyric: emotional expression ▲ Drama: idea of audience, 1st lyric person being a character apart from the poet. This was the difference from experienced poets (Wordsworth) where the author was who experiences all the things. ▲ Narrative: need of a story, of a plot In dramatic monologues we need: • A speaker • An occasion • Revelation of the character • Interaction with the audience, dramatic action. • Audience • Action that happens in the present. “My Last Duchess” The story is based on the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso who was a old man getting married with a young woman and on Lucrezia de Medici. They were real characters of Italian Renaissance. Some others characters as the painter are unreal, fictitious. FORM • Setting: Italian Renaissance • Iambic and riming pentameters. • Enjambments TOPICS • Issue of patriarchal power and power of aristocracy, social classes. • Violence behind this power • Relation between life & art. 19.12.14 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI & CHRISTINA ROSSETTI This movement started in 1848 with the publication of the journal “The Germ” which was a manifest of all kind of arts (poetry, painting…). “Thoughts to watch nature in poetry, literature and art” the subtitle of that number of the magazine. • William Holman Hunt • Dante Gabriel Rossetti • John Everett Millais • Thomas Woolner • James Collinson • F.G. Stephens The firsts three were the most important. ▲ Emphasis on beauty and on the form of the beauty. ▲ They were inspired by the primitive Italian art (= Pre- Raphael) ▲ Emphasis on the ideas more than in the form itself. Many of these painters what they did was to consider a book as a form of art itself this movement became writing too. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882) Rossetti = double works= works by him in which he produces a painting and a poem based on the same idea. But in some occasions he responded to some well-known work of another artist. This was ekphrasis = process of a text reference inspired by a visual art: ▲ Classical conception of the term: description ▲ Modern conception of the term: description of a piece of literature which is based on a painting. In the case of Rossetti, we have 1st a poem and then sometimes a painting. 1849 William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais published paintings in the Royal Academy signing them with PRB and at the same time Rossetti exhibiting his works in Hyde Park Corner signing them as PRB too. PRB = PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD The influence of this movement lasted until the early 20c. ELEMENTS OF THE PAINTINGS • Presence of nature. • Emphasis on the hair of woman. • Mysterious atmosphere of the ladies represented • Archaic atmosphere in order to go back, medievalising paintings. Interest of representing the influence that this movement had on primary Italian art. HIS LIFE • Born in London. • His family had Italian origins. • 2 brothers, 2 sisters. • Christina Rossetti was engaged to James Collison and she was his sister so, she was closed to the brotherhood but she wasn’t part of it because it was a woman. • He studied at the Royal Academy. • Elizabeth Siddal = he fell in love with her and they got married. Therefore, she was the 1st muse of this movement. But she committed suicide and their intense relation was also portrait in his works. “The Blessed Damsel”