A Literary Guide to Victorian and 20th Century Literature
Victorian Literature
Key Terms and Concepts
Punch
A satirical magazine inaugurated in 1841, where William Makepeace Thackeray published a humorous description of the World Exhibition. Punch was known for critiquing Victorian society through drawings and writings.
Victorian
While literally describing things and events during Queen Victoria’s reign, “Victorian” carries connotations of “prudish,” “repressed,” and “old-fashioned.” However, these terms don’t fully encompass the era’s complexity, often considered a second English Renaissance.
Mammonism
Derived from the Aramaic word for “riches” and the demon representing avarice, “Mammonism” in Victorian times referred to materialism and the idolatry of wealth.
Necessarianism
The doctrine that all events, including acts of will, are predetermined by antecedent causes.
Bildungsroman
Literally meaning “novel of education,” a Bildungsroman focuses on a protagonist’s moral and psychological development. Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist exemplifies this genre.
Social-Problem Novel
Also called “industrial novels” or “Condition-of-England novels,” these works addressed social, political, economic, and industrial issues in mid-Victorian Britain after the Industrial Revolution. Often didactic in nature, they advocated for electoral and political reform. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is a prime example.
Sensation Novel
Emerging in the mid-19th century, sensation novels emphasized suspense, thrilling plots, and sensational subject matter. They often featured intricate plots involving crime, mystery, and supernatural elements to evoke strong emotional responses. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray exemplifies this genre.
Workhouse
Institutions providing accommodation and employment to those unable to support themselves financially. Workhouses were characterized by meager diets, family separation, poor hygiene, repulsive jobs, inadequate medical treatment, corporal punishment, and strict discipline. Charles Dickens’s novels, such as Oliver Twist, depict workhouses as grim and dehumanizing.
Realism
A literary and artistic movement reacting against Romanticism, Realism aimed to depict everyday life and ordinary people truthfully, without idealization. George Eliot, a prominent novelist of the period, often used the term “realism” to describe her own work.
Regional Fiction
A type of realistic novel focusing on provincial life, often reacting against urban life. Regional novels use a recognizable region and its distinct features—social relations, customs, language, dialect—to illustrate an aspect of life or the effects of a particular environment on its inhabitants. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is an example.
Pre-Raphaelite
Referring to both art and literature, “Pre-Raphaelite” originated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1849 by artists and writers like William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. They sought to reform art by rejecting Victorian conventions and returning to medieval traditions. Christina Rossetti, while not an official member, was a crucial figure in their circle.
The PRB (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood)
See “Pre-Raphaelite” above.
The Germ
A short-lived journal (January-April 1850) published by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, edited by William Michael Rossetti. It served as a platform for members to express their artistic views.
Aestheticism
A movement valuing beauty for its own sake, separate from social, political, or moral concerns. Popularized by Walter Pater, the motto “art for art’s sake” encapsulated this philosophy. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered an important work of Aestheticism.
Decadence
Associated with moral, cultural, or sexual decline, “decadence” in Victorian literature often intertwined with a fascination for artificiality and perversity.
Fin de Siècle
Meaning “end of the century,” fin de siècle in late 19th-century Britain went beyond chronology to encompass artistic, moral, and social concerns. This period was marked by decadence, pessimism, a preoccupation with decline, moral ambiguity, and a fascination with the exotic, erotic, and macabre. Key figures like Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley challenged traditional values and norms, exploring new artistic expressions.
20th Century Literature
Key Terms and Concepts
Georgian Poetry
A group of poets, known as the “Georgians,” sought to revitalize poetry in response to contemporary life. They aimed to preserve English poetry from modern civilization’s disruptions, often focusing on rural themes. Their work laid the groundwork for themes and forms that would later emerge in war poetry.
War Poetry
Gaining prominence during and after World War I, “war poetry” primarily refers to works from that conflict, particularly by poets like Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfried Sassoon. The term is sometimes considered problematic, as these poems often encompass much more than just war.
Soldier-Poet
A subgenre of war poetry that emerged during World War I, featuring poets who were also soldiers.
Shell Shock
A psychological condition affecting many World War I soldiers, often treated with therapies like the “talking cure” developed by Dr. W. Rivers. Soldiers were encouraged to process their traumatic experiences through talking and writing.
Modernism
A literary and cultural movement arising in the early 20th century as a reaction against Victorian traditions and the upheaval of World War I. Modernism emphasized innovation, experimentation, and a break from the past. Key features include free verse, stream of consciousness, and interior monologue. Modernist literature often explored urban settings, the relativity of reality, and fragmented perceptions of time. Notable authors include T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, who challenged traditional narrative structures. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway exemplifies this movement.
The Bloomsbury Group
An association of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked in London’s Bloomsbury area. The “Bloomsberries” gathered until around 1930 for conversation, companionship, and creative inspiration. They lacked a formal agenda or political mission, engaging instead in impromptu discussions on various topics.
Tunneling
A narrative technique coined by Virginia Woolf, “tunneling” involves interweaving past and present to create a layered understanding of characters and events. Woolf seamlessly integrates flashbacks and memories within the present narrative, allowing readers to delve into characters’ histories and psychological depths. This technique is evident in Mrs. Dalloway.
Stream of Consciousness
A writing style capturing the flow of a character’s thoughts and feelings as they occur, presented in a continuous, unstructured manner. Stream of consciousness often eschews traditional punctuation and rapidly jumps between ideas, mimicking the way people actually think. Authors like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf used this technique to provide intimate glimpses into their characters’ inner lives.
Postmodernism
Encompassing movements in general culture and the arts, Postmodernism is characterized by skepticism towards grand narratives and ideologies, embracing relativism, fragmentation, eclecticism, and pastiche. It often challenges traditional boundaries and hierarchies in art, literature, and thought.
Feminism
A movement and theoretical perspective advocating for women’s rights and equality. Feminism challenges patriarchal structures and seeks to dismantle gender-based oppression and discrimination. It encompasses a wide range of approaches, from advocating for legal and political reforms to critiquing cultural and social norms. Feminist writers reject the “unified” narrative of women projected by patriarchy, emphasizing the diversity of women’s experiences across class, race, and culture. They often explore the link between women’s sexuality and textuality.
Historiographic Metafiction
A genre that self-consciously engages with the processes of writing history. Historiographic metafiction blends historical fiction with metafictional techniques, questioning the objectivity and reliability of historical narratives. It highlights the constructed nature of history and explores how historical knowledge is produced and interpreted. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a notable example.
Multiculturalism
A sociopolitical approach recognizing and promoting the coexistence of diverse cultural groups within a society. Multiculturalism values and encourages the preservation and expression of different cultural identities and traditions, advocating for mutual respect and understanding. Multicultural novels often describe the experience of living “in-between” different cultural spaces, portraying cultural identity as fluid and contextual. They frequently highlight political issues such as racism, social prejudice, and class oppression. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a prominent example.
Queer Theory
Reclaiming the term “queer” from its derogatory past, queer theory analyzes how dominant ideas about gender and sexuality are used to legitimize social values, principles, and power hierarchies. It examines the construction of heterosexuality as “natural” and how gender norms reinforce a dominant culture of heterosexuality. Queer theory opposes the traditional binary divide between masculinity and femininity, as well as heterosexuality/homosexuality, celebrating alternative expressions of gender and sexuality. Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a significant work in this area.
Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism examines how we represent and interact with the environment, both natural and manmade. It concerns itself with social and environmental justice and how the exploitation of nature affects us all. Ecocriticism seeks to “de-center” humans within their ecosystem, recognizing our interconnectedness with the natural world. It also analyzes the socially constructed, often dichotomous categories we create to engage with the non-human world. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a notable example of ecocritical literature.
Ecofeminism
analyses the interconnection of the oppression of women and nature. Drawing parallels between domination of land and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine these hierarchical, gendered relationships, in which the land is often equated with the feminine, seen as fertile resources and the property of man.
– Multiculturalism
It defends the inclusion of the views and contributions of diverse members of society, while also maintaining respect for their ethnic, religious and cultural differences and withholding the demand for their assimilation into the dominant culture.
Multicultural novels often describe the experience of living “in-between” different cultural spaces. They portray cultural identity as fluid and contextual, rather than fixed and territory-bound. Multicultural novels usually highlight political issues, like racism and social prejudice and class oppression. (The Embassy of Cambodia)