9781408204818

Victorian Literature (York Notes Companions)

An accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the era, this Companion explores influential dramatic works by Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde; the poetry of mourning; novelistic genres, including social problem novels and sensation fiction; and the literature of the fin de siècle’s aesthetes and decadents. Cultural and historical debates – focussing on empire, national identity, science and evolution, print culture and gender – supply essential context alongside discussion of relevant critical theory. Author: Beth Palmer. (311 pages)  Level: Gymnasiet (esp. A)

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York Notes Companions:

  • Analysis of key texts and debates
  • Extended commentaries provide further in-depth analysis of individual texts
  • Notes contain extra context and explanations of literary terms
  • Historical, social and cultural contexts explored in introductory chapters and alongside discussions
  • Modern critical theory and perspectives in practice
  • Timelines and annotated further reading

CONTENTS:

Part One – Introduction

Part Two – A Cultural Overview

Part Three – Texts, Writers and Contexts

Victorian Poetry – Memory and Mourning: The Brownings, Swinburne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Extended commentary: Tennyson, In Memoriam

The Social Problem Novel: Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley and Elizabeth Gaskell

Extended Commentary: Gaskell, North and South (1855)

The Provincial or Regional Novel: Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy

Extended Commentary: Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

Sensation Fiction: Wilkie Collins, Ellen Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Extended Commentary: Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)

Victorian Drama: Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw

Extended Commentary: Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893)

Aesthetes and Decadents: Walter Pater, Arthur Symonds, J. K. Huysmans and Oscar Wilde

Extended Commentary: Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Part Four: Critical theories and Debates

Reader Reception and the popular author

New women, New Readers

The Literature of Empire and National Identity

Science, Eugenics and Evolution

Part Five – References and resources

Timeline

Further reading

Index