5. The Late Victorian Period (1880-
1900)
Decay of Victorian values
British imperialism
Boer War Irish question
Bismarck's Germany became a rival
power
United States became a rival power
Economic depression led to mass
immigration
Socialism
7. Biography
Was born on June 2, 1840 in
Dorset, England and died on January
11, 1928
Hardy's mother, provided for his
education.
Hardy was apprenticed to an architect.
He worked in an office, which specialized
in restoration of churches.
In 1874 Hardy married Emma Lavinia
Gifford. Who then died in 1912
In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence
Emily Dugdale.
8. Occupation
Thomas Hardy was an English
novelist, short story writer, and poet.
He was a Victorian Poet
He used his writings to elaborate his own
pessimistic view of life
His poetry marks the transition from the
Victorian Age to the modernist movement
of the 20th century
9. Achievements
First success was Far From the Madding
Crowd, published in 1874.
Many of his stories have been filmed.
He has been regarded as a regional
novelist
10. Novels
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
Far From the Madding Crowd (1874)
The Return of the Native (1878)
The Trumpet-Major (1880)
Two on a Tower (1882)
The Mayor of Caster Bridge (1886)
The Woodlanders (1887)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
Jude the Obscure (1895)
The Well-Beloved (1897)
11. Short Stories
Barbara of the House of Grebe (1890)
The Vampirine Fair (1909)
Absent-mindedness in a Parish Choir
The Duke's Reappearance
The Return of the Native (excerpt)
Squire Petrick's Lady
Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver
The Withered Arm
13. Henry James
American-born writer, gifted with
talents in literature, psychology, and
philosophy.
James wrote 20 novels, 112 stories, 12
plays and a number of works of literary
criticism.
14. His Major Achievement and
Specific Feature of His Works
James first achieved recognition as a writer
of the “international novel” (international
theme)---a story which brings together
persons of various nationalities who
represent certain characteristics of their
countries.
The American’s, however, usually have a
morality and innocence which the Europeans
lack.
James seemed to value both the
sophistication of Europe and the idealism of
America.
15. Notable works by James
Novels
Novellas and tales
Travel writings
Literary criticism
Memoirs and Autobiography
Plays
Biographies
16. Novels
Watch and Ward (1871) )
The American (1877)
The Europeans (1878)
Confidence (1879)
Washington Square (1880)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
The Bostonians (1886)
The Tragic Muse (1890)
The Other House (1896)
The Awkward Age (1899
The Sacred Fount (1901)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Outcry (1911)
17. Travel writings
A Little Tour in France (1884)
English Hours (1905)
The American Scene (1907)
Italian Hours (1909)
19. James' Literary Criticism
Henry James' literary criticism
is an indispensable part of his
contribution to literature.
He worked out his influential
principles of fiction in The Art
of Fiction (1884).
22. Aestheticism
• Ruskin had emphasized the importance of Art and
Beauty as a means of moral progress.
• The Pre-Raphaelites had also worshipped beauty
above everything.
• The Oxford university professor Walter Pater, in his
essays published in 1867–68, stated that life had to be
lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty.
• Therefore it was quite easy for the painter James
McNeill Whistler to introduce the French doctrine of
“Art for Art’s sake” into England.
• This doctrine placed the artist’s activity outside and
above morals and led to the beginning of English
literary Aestheticism, which can be defined as....
• a reaction against any utilitarian or moral conception
of Art .
23. Aestheticism
Art for Art’s sake” meant:
art for the pleasure and sensations that it
could produce, without any regard to standards
of morality or utility.
The fundamental principles of this movement
were the following:
The cult of beauty.
The choice for a life beyond common
morality.
The solution of the dichotomy between senses
and spirit through the theory of the
spiritualization of the senses.
The reversal of the principle of art imitating
life into that of life imitating art.
25. Walter Pater
Born in Stepney in London's East End
Dr Pater died while Walter was an infant
and the family moved to Enfield, London.
• Pater was the defender of hedonism, a
doctrine according to which ...
• Pleasure is the chief good to be pursued
by man, i.e. the end of all human
actions.
• In his opinion , life should be treated in
the spirit of art, i.e. life as a work of art.
26. Literary Works
• In his “Studies in the history of Renaissance”(1873) he
stated that:
1. “the secret of happiness lies in the enjoyment of
beauty”;
2. “the finest sensations are to be found in art”;
3. “the deepest and noblest emotions can be
experienced in a life meant as a work of art.”
• Through our senses we can enjoy any form of artistic
beauty and thus live a deep spiritual experience.
• This is particularly true if we live our life as if it were a
work of art.
• These ideas made him a sort of ascetic hedonist.
29. Oscar Wilde
Born on October 16 1855
He was one of the most successful
playwrights of late Victorian London and
one of the greatest celebrities of his days.
He suffered a dramatic downfall and was
imprisoned after been convicted of “gross
indecency” for homosexual acts.
He died in Paris in 1900.
30. Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism
• Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal:
he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”.
• His aestheticism clashed with the
didacticism of Victorian novels.
• The artist = the creator of beautiful
things.
31. Literary Works
Poetry; Poems 1891 The Ballad of Reading
Gaol, 1898
Fairy tales: The Happy Prince and other
Tales, 1888 The House of
Pomegranates, 1891
Novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892 A
Woman of no Importance, 1893 The
Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
Salomé, 1893 Only Connect
33. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1856.
In 1876, Shaw, moved to London.
With his background in economics and
politics, Shaw's socialist viewpoint gave his
writing a sense of hope for human improvement.
After the turn of the century, Shaw's plays
gradually began to achieve production
and, eventually, acceptance in England Shaw
received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925
In 1950, Shaw fell off a ladder while trimming a
tree on his property outside of London, and died
a few days later of complications from the
injury, at the age of 94.
34. SHAW INFLUENCES
Shaw first worked as an art critic, then music
critic, and finally, from 1895 to 1898, as
Theatre Critic for the Saturday Review .
Founded the Fabian Society, a socialist
political organization dedicated to
transforming Britain into a socialist state
through education.
The Fabian society would later be
instrumental in founding the London School
of Economics and the Labor Party.
35. SHAW INFLUENCES
The outbreak of war in 1914 changed Shaw's
life.
For Shaw, the war represented the
bankruptcy of the capitalist system and a
tragic waste of young lives, all under the
guise of patriotism.
He expressed his opinions in a series of
newspaper articles which proved to be a
disaster for Shaw's public stature: he was
treated as an outcast, and there was even talk
of his being tried for treason.