文档介绍：19世纪的小说文学
The Victorian Period
The Victorian Period (1837-1901)
The years 1840-1890 represent a peak in English novel writing)
the Victorian background
The Victorian era, from the coronation(加冕礼) of Queen Victoria in 1837 until her death in 1901, was an era of several unsettling(动乱不宁的) social developments that forced writers more than ever before to take positions on the immediate issues of society.
Thus, although romantic forms of expression in poetry and prose continued to dominate English literature throughout much of the century, the attention of many writers was directed(指导,引领), sometimes passionately, to such issues as the growth of English democracy, the education of the masses, the progress of industrial enterprise and the consequent rise of a materialistic philosophy, and the plight (困境;境况)of the newly industrialized worker.
In addition, the unsettling of religious belief by new advances in science, particularly the theory of evolution and the historical study of the Bible, drew other writers away from the immemorial(无法追忆的,远古的) subjects of literature into considerations of problems of faith and truth.
Critical Realism became the major literary trend in English literature of the Victorian Period, and the novel became its major form of expression.
Romantic novelists at the beginning of the 19th century
Critical Realists in the middle of the century
the late 19th century
Critical realists:
(1) Thomas Hardy: fatalism宿命论, pessimistic悲观,厌世 novels
(2)e Meredith: Egoist自我主义者;
New Romanticism: they refused to deal with the social reality, and concentrated their attention on imaginary adventures in novel writing.
Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island (金银岛)
William Morris, the first English writer who voiced the revolutionary ideal of socialism in his poetry and prose.
A Dream of John Ball (梦见约翰﹒保尔)
News from Nowhere (来自乌有乡的消息)
:
The nation-wide depression in the late eenth century provided the background for the appearance of the decaden