Scarica Appunti sulla letteratura vittoriana e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! PROSE Victorian Novel The novel was the main genre of the 19th century, identifies the Victorian age. It has so much success because of the growth of the middle class which were the principal readers, also because more and more people were able to read and to write, the price of books lowered, and printing techniques developed. Plus, the industrial evolution had brought many inventions, tools that helped women with the domestic activity, so they had more free time, and on their free time they read novels. The Victorian age see women access literature not only as readers but also as writers, in a stronger way than before. Also, the relationship between writers and readers became much stronger, writers wrote in order to please the readers in that way their books would have more sales, the middle class preferred novels that were realistic, the world they knew and lived in, so the main themes were connected to the individual to his or her place in society and their desire to acquire a social position or to find love. The main subgenres of Victorian novels were: realistic/industrial deals with real contemporary events, Britain industrial evolutions and changes. It’s divided into two types: the Bildungsroman and the “condition of England” novel. The bildungsroman was about coming of age, a novel that talks about a little boy or girl who had a troubled childhood, as the novel goes on it follows the growth of the character and the maturity, adventure, and misadventure until they finally grow up and get their happy endings, like the apprenticeship novel or education novel which portray a young sensible character in search of the meaning of life and the nature of the world. Some examples are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the novel follows the life of the orphan Jane Eyre since childhood until she becomes a governor then a teacher and eventually marries Mr. Rochester, after having inherited a sum of money from a relative in the colonies. The condition of England novel or industrial novel are novels that describes the condition of industrialized England. Their main themes are social problems and for this reason they are also called social novel or social problem novel. The name condition in England was taken from the title of a text by Carlyle “the condition of England question”. These novels have a polemical tone, they criticize, they want to raise awareness of the terrible condition of Britain poorer classes, how they lived, experiences. These novels are in fact connected to the hungry forties, a period in the early 1840 when Britain experience an economic depression that caused much misery among the poorer classes. An example is Charles Dickens with “Hard times” and “Oliver Twist” Fantasy, fantastic novel which is divided in two subtypes Children literature developed thanks to authors such as Lewis Caroll, which is the writer of Alice in wonderland. The children in these novels were depicted either as innocents or sinful, they generally tended to be orphans, rebels, or outcasts. Alice in wonderland wasn’t exclusively intended for children the fantastic adventure of Alice is strictly connected to contemporary context. Caroll uses the novel and the unrealistic absurd setting in order to freely criticize the problems of Victorian age. Other authors were Rudyard Kipling with the Jungle book Detective novel two types: whodunits are intellectually stimulating because they are like a complex puzzle, the reader just like the investigator must solve the puzzle of a criminal event. The word whodunits come from a question who have done it. Some examples Arthur Conan Doyle the adventure of Sherlock Holmes, Wilkie Collins the women in white. thrillers in these novels the crime is committed along side the action, they are full of suspense, conflict tension.
