Middle Ages – Notes and Quotes (You will be quizzed on ...



Notes (You will be quizzed on this information and it will show up on a unit test – please keep this paper in your notebook to study later.)

What will we be reading? We will be reading a variety of Victorian Poetry and excerpts from Victorian literature.

What will we be watching? We will be watching The Importance of Being Earnest, a romantic comedy; and Sherlock Holmes, a mystery. These are both good examples of this time period. Pay attention to the social classes in Victorian society.

What makes it interesting? The Victorian period produced some of the world’s most famous literature and stories. You will recognize many titles and may have even seen several films based on the novels. Really, it wasn’t all that long ago…

From the text: The social, political, and historical backgrounds of Victorian literature are parallel to the United States in the twentieth century. England’s role as world leader in technology and general economic prosperity in the nineteenth century meant that it was in roughly the same situation the United States finds itself in the twentieth century. Both are periods of rapid technological advance, not all of it beyond criticism; of concern about the proper role of government in relation to regulating big business in a booming economy; of concern for side effects of progress, such as pollution and unemployment; of conflict at home about fighting wars abroad; of conflicting views of the world as good, justifying basic optimism and faith, or as evil, justifying pessimism and doubt, even despair. All of these concerns show up in the literature of the two nations in the respective centuries. Among the leading writers of both periods are to be found severe social critics.

Notes

Time: The Victorian Period

• Began in 1837 with Victoria taking the throne at the age of 18

• Ended in 1901 with the death of Victoria

Who ruled?

• Queen Victoria

• She ruled for 60 years!

What was going on back then?

During the reign of Victoria, England became the wealthiest nation in the world with the expansion of the British Empire. In fact there’s a popular expression “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” The phrase was true for quite some time as England had colonies that extended to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and many other parts of the world.

While England was a great power, they also made the first serious and large-scale attempts to address and solve the social problems central to the industrial and democratic revolutions. In other words, the concerns that emerged during the Romantic period were at the forefront of politics and society. It’s not to say they solved these problems; in fact, many of the problems remain unsolved today. Finally, much like Americans today, the Victorians had mixed feelings about their position as a world power. Some celebrated the industrial development and prosperity and others were less confident about England’s progress which they believed was being achieved at great cost to traditional human relationships.

The Victorian Period in England can be broken into three distinct periods

The Early Period (1832-1848) - The event that marked the beginning of the Victorian period was the First Reform Bill of 1832. The bill did at least two important things: it gave power to the middle class by extending the right to vote to all men owning property worth ten pounds or more and it reduced the power of the upper-class by redistributing representation in parliament. This change was effected peacefully without revolution and marked the emergence of the middle class as a dominant force in politics. Still, the country experienced hardship in the form of terrible living and working conditions, as well as economic depression and unemployment.

The Middle Period (1848-1870) – England reached the height of its wealth and productivity during this time under the system of Free Trade. The goods that dominated world markets were Lancashire cotton goods, Yorkshire woolens, and metal products from Sheffield and Birmingham. London, which had a population of two million, was growing rapidly and was the world center for banking, insurance, and shipping. The use of railways contributed to this prosperity.

A great event occurred during this time, the first World’s Fair, called the Great Exhibition of 1851, the fair was held in the Crystal Palace (see page 602), a structure of glass and steel that covered over 18 acres without any interior supports.

The Late Period (1870-1901) – England was firmly established as a world power. English imperialism, or the realization of an ideal of the Anglo-Saxon race spreading its supposedly superior civilization throughout the world, showed the spirit and pride of controlling and managing a vast empire. Victoria was made Empress of India as a part of this notion. (We know today that many of the colonies of England became independent such as Ireland and India, but at this time England dominated.)

Life was good in London and beyond. Middle-class prosperity, fashionable lifestyles, and Victorian architecture demonstrated England’s success. Yet some underlying problems still existed with the emergence of communist and socialist theories about the working classes and labor exploitation.

Victorian attitudes: Middle class Victorians believed in hard work, moral seriousness, and social respectability. They were progressive as they favored science and technology, yet conservative in their attitudes of worldly pleasures, private emotions, and personal relationships. The “prudish” association with British people comes from this period, which is a bit of an overgeneralization.

Evangelicalism: emphasized individual religious experience and spiritual zeal / puritanical code of morality / strong work ethic

Utilitarianism: subjected all human practices to evaluation based on their fundamental usefullness (or utility)

New ideas and intellectual controversy

Charles Darwin wrote Origin of Species, theorizing that various forms of life on earth, including human beings, had evolved over milions of years through natural selection.

Karl Marx published Das Kapital based on his observations of working conditions in England. These theories of economics and politics became the basis for communism and socialism and were extremely influential.

Significant Victorian novelists and poets include:

• Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights

• Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre

• Robert Browning – poetry (My Last Duchess)

• Elizabeth Barret Browning – various poetry

• Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass

• Charles Dickens – Hard Times, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol

• George Eliot – Silas Marner

• Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book

• Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde

• Bram Stoker – Dracula

• Lord Alfred Tennyson – The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Lady of Shalott (poems)

• William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair

• Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Ernest

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes

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