Scarica Appunti in inglese sull'epoca vittoriana e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE VICTORIAN AGE 1830-1901 William IV’s reign 1830-1837 • The Reform Act: 1832, all male members to the middle class were granted the right to vote • The Factory Act: 1833, the children can’t work more than 48 hours a week and no person under 18 could work more than 69 hours a week • The Poor Law Amendment Act: 1834, created the workhouse for the people who could not support themselves VICTORIA 1837-1901 • Reigned constitutionally • Became a mediator above party politics • 1837-1847 two important political tendency: liberal campaign for free trade and birth of Chartism • Corn Lows, abolition of tariff on imports and export • Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel (1788-1850) • “Chartism” (1838-1848) working-class movement which sprang from popular discontent both with the conditions for workers and Reform Act • 1838 by Irishman Fergus O’Connor: the People Charters: universal adult male suffrage, equal elector districts, the right for a man without property to be an MP, secret ballot, annual general election, payment of members of parliament. • Lord Palmerston, his liberalism was based on the idea that tyrannies blocked free trade • Elementary Education Act 1870, recognized the need for general primary schooling • Public Health Act 1875 • The Fabian Society association of the middle class intellectual includes (G. B. Show), in 1906 became the Labur Party • Women’s liberation movement 1960-70, movement for the question of women’s right. The adherents were so-called “suffragette” • The city was polluted and woman and children work until they can • The poor lived in slums so well described In novel of Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell Positive element: the economical life increase Negative element: the exploitation of poor • Use Puritan’s moral and sexual values VICTORIAN LETTERATURE • The setting used by most Victorian novelists was the city, which was the main symbol of the industrial civilization as well as the expression of anonymous lives and lost identities • From a structural point of view, can be divide the Victorian novel into: • Social problem novel (novel of Elizabeth Gaskell) • Novel of manners (William Thackeray) • Humanitarian novel (Bronte Sister and Stevenson) divided into: fantastic, realistic and moral • Naturalistic novel (Thomas Hardy and George Elliot) • “Nonsense” created by Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. In his famous novel, “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland” (1865), Carroll crate a nonsensical universe where the social rules and conventions have disintegrated the cause/effect relationship doesn’t exist and time and space lost their function . Edward Lear: “Book of Nonsense” 1846, a collection of a short humorous poem known as “Limericks”; here the seriousness of the tone and the regular five-line verse contrast with the absurdly contest. • Middle period (1870-80) woman: Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Elliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans) AUTHORS CHARLES DICKENS 1812-1870 “David Copperfield” 1849-50 • Strong emotional identification of Dickens with David, and the book is built as a fictional autobiography • The characters are both realistic and romantic • Main themes: • A fragile creature’s struggle to live • The important of strict education based on hard work and physical punishment • The bad living condition of the poor • The important of social status • Friendship and love leading to marriage “Oliver Twist” 1838
