 Hello and welcome back to NPTEL national program of Technology Enhanced Learning, a joint venture of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science. As you are aware these lectures are for students in old IITs and other engineering colleges and the role of humanities and social sciences in these institutes are quite significant because it adds to the curriculum of engineering students. I am Krishna Barva I have been teaching English for the last 14 years in the department of humanities and social sciences at IIT Guwahati. We are presently in the lecture series Language and Literature and this module is module 3 of the series titled History of English Literature. We are going to do lecture 6 of this module titled the Victorians. Let us have a recap of the previous lecture. In lecture 1 if you remember we had talked about the need for understanding the background of each literary output and how it adds to the study of English literature. We want you to be introduced to the spirit of the age the currents which go in the age and that helps and adds to your appreciation of texts. It may we may go back to sources time, we may go back to the renasa, we may go back to the romantic age and in doing so we try to see how some of the characteristics add to the development of new trends which come into the literary times of each age. In lecture 1 we had done Anglo-Saxon literature, the role of Sosa as the father of English literature of English poetry as well as prose and all the poetry which was there was Ernest and Somba it was perverted with fatalism and religious feelings. In lecture 2 we covered the age of Shakespeare a great giant who had dominated the entire age which was the age of Elizabethans where we had the precursors to Shakespeare to Paolo and the university with in poetry we have Sidney as well as Spencer and where human dignity of human reason the means by which we could interpret man and nature. While we were in module 3 Milton and his times we have seen how another great giant in English literature Milton towered conspicuously each was representative of the age Shakespeare and Milton and together they formed a suggestive commentary upon the two forces that rule literature one is the force of impulse and the force of fixed purpose. In lecture 4 we did the Augustan age and where we have found from the 18th century and the neoclassical age there is a reason and how we have to see the political works how for the first time we must chronicle the triumph of English prose during this time and here it was during this time that we encountered for the first time the history of the books about reforms about arguments about ideas about facts the newspaper the magazine the periodical which will have great trends even in Victorian age you will find how in this century to I mean in this age to it had the beginnings of that and how it had developed especially the characteristics of Augustan poetry was a lot of decorum a lot of irony as well as the imitation of the classics. And the transition between the Augustan period and the romantic period was a drastic shift in literary ideas and when we went to the romantic age we will see how the view of the life in urban society from that found in the Queen Annie writers and sifts in the view of nature and function of poetry and the poetry has for its major function the expression of the poetry motion and the relation of the poem to the poet that is how it developed into the romantics and that was the beginning of the 19th century. And no label can accurately describe a period which was so rich and so abundant as the romantic period we did this in lecture 5 last time and it is surely and definitely a widening of the imaginative horizon a sharpening of emotional sensibility horizons were untrammeled almost it was a take off from the Rennasa from the time of Shakespeare and a profound shift in sensibility and especially in its intensity and in its imagination. And this return to nature we had the Grey key poets Wordsworth Coleridge Byron Shalikites Scott Austin who were the prose writers slam and dequancy. Now we come to the history of English literature in this module to lecture 6 which is the Victorian which is equally interesting right and specially for you engineers you will find that somewhere or the other reason plays a big part here the role of social responsibility the role of how you understand nature how you understand life what is realism these are the things which were explored and being written about well. So, the Victorian age from 1850 from the time Queen Victoria came to the throne to her debt in 1900 it is a long period almost 63 years and what was the where the characteristics which ruled this age on the surface we find that democracy just now we were talking about liberty fraternity quality which were the guiding forces at the time of romantics and we find that democracy as a form as a political form and the long struggle of the Anglo sections for personal liberty is settled and the meaning of liberty therefore, is which was being questioned and analyzed all throughout these ages has been almost settled. The House of Common becomes a ruling power in England so here a series of new reform bills comes in and soothes for themselves the man who shall represent them. So, monarchy is completely you know being overlooked by overturned by democracy second because it is an age of democracy it is an age of popular education too and of religious tolerance of growing brotherhood and of profound social unrest because of the printing press because of all the things where pamphlets and newspapers and social awareness where disseminated therefore, you find it was the age of awareness too it was an age comparative piece if you look into the ways that evolution had take place the American war of independence had just been over social equality and universal brotherhood and its rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in mechanical invention it was almost an overwhelming sort of development in all fields. So, the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901 included a period of enormous political, social and cultural innovation and sense you have to look into the background political background the Victorians made great advances in science technology and the arts sort creative solutions to social problems and created a body of literature that continues to fascinate and inspire reader artist and scholars. I think you know that this was the quote of British imperialism where they explored boundaries they were when the shores were almost stopped in the American continent they came here to India to Africa to New Zealand to different parts of Africa and you find that imperialism British imperialism took it came to the fore and as if the sun never set on the British empire and therefore, you find literature also try to express those that age of optimism and also different ways that one could look into the world. During the Victorian age England changed as much as dramatically as it had in all this previous history there was a lot of change there was a lot of innovation it to us here in this 19th century that England reached in height as a world imperial power. Changes in industrial production techniques had a profound impact on almost all aspects of life for every class of citizen may be the working class the role of the working class where also question where they exploited where they being overthrown or where they being used for imperial gain unregulated industrialization created great prosperity for a lucky few, but a great misery for the masses which we find in Charles Dickens novels and other writers. The early Victorian period let us look into it is marked by two major non-literate events first was the public railways expanded on an unprecedented scheme. So, communication was very quick and people could reach one destination to the other second the British parliament passed the reform bill which was landmark in itself like Manchester and Liverpool voting rights to reflect growing population and in 1832 reform bill marked for many Victorians the beginning of a new age of political power unlike they had ever experienced. The 1830s we are going into the social as well as into the political history before we come to the literature of the period. This is necessary for you to understand therefore, as I told you before in every lecture that we had done in studying literature it is always good to study also the literary the social the political undercurrents the way that each acts upon the creative literature of the time. Well, so this became known as the time of troubles big people did not take things for granted they began to revolve they began to question working conditions were deplorable for the majority of people including women and children who worked in mines and factories. So, there was a sense of literature where novels essays came out they talked about this type of exploitation and there was a lot of social responsibility which went into the making of literature. And the literature of this time period often focused on the plight of the poor and the new urban reality of industrial England. So, it was not pastoral as it was in the romantic era or maybe in the Renasa where people went to the villages and where one tried to find in the landscape it was more concentrating on the urban reality the realism which was there in urban England the two Englands that of Wendy and that of the poor. The 1850s when we come to the 1850s there were too many a time of optimism because on the surface industry seemed to be the promise of prosperity was there it was a time of peace. So, too was England part of his science and technology because it was evidenced by the crystal palace centerpiece of the great exhibition of 1851 among other scientific works of the time we have to remember we will come back to that later Charles Darwin's first origin of species and the descent of man seemed to challenge all previous thinking about creation and man's special role in the world. So, man was man centric man was just one among many creatures who existed as a product of a long evolutionary history. So, the mid Victorian period when we come to that would ultimately see often contrary forces a lot of contradictions a lot of paradoxes like the promise of progress yet the emptiness of long held beliefs that could come to a head during the final decades of the Victorian era. Well, let me quote a line here it is not by the monk in the cell or the saint in his closet and by the valiant walker in humble sphere and in dangerous days that the landmarks of liberty are pushed forward these words by the vigorous social critic William Greg apply with special force to the first half of the 19th century. Now, when we look into the social history now we look into the two names which dominated one was William Corbett and one was Francis place and who did an equally valiant work for industrial population of the city he was a tailor, but even then he was prosperous and he also added to the literary output of the time. The two great evolution that had come in with the new century proved to be reactionary forces in English life and from the reformers point of view the industrial revolution while aggravating the symptoms of distress had appealed strongly to the basic instincts of the commercial class as a new class came in and they were trying to out do their aristocracy by new ways of imbibing a new culture and therefore, many have said that the Victorian culture you know it was an age of pregissness of some put on decorums and some put on conventions. The French revolution had created the stage for progressive measures in the minds of the mid statesmen comparatively it the whole age may not unfairly describe as one of peaceful activity. The middle class citizen grown under the burden of habit taxation, but after all it was he who already began to reap some of the advantages of the industrial revolution I told you that on the whole the one best of at the close of the war was the country gentleman. The cessation of the war brought little elevation and the year from 1815 to 1832 were very bleak years in annals of the London poor at sharing cross we see Francis place we whom we had just mentioned had his famous library he was a businessman, but he had at the back room all tucked away at the back of his shops a beautiful library of pamphlets journals books and all documentations of that time of every time of political and social unrest. So, when we go into this intellectual developments yet it is recorded of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous there was quite a revolution in scientific thought we have seen that following upon the works of Darwin and his school with an immense outburst of social and political theorizing right which was represented by Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, we have our Marx we will have different political thinkers will come later this in turn produce a new hunger for intellectual food and resulted in a great increase in the productions of the press and of other more durable pieces of literature. So, the printing press was at its highest activity while place Cobbett Owen and Elizabeth Frye were working in the various ways in their different ways of disseminating knowledge we find Charles Dickens born in one of the stormiest of years in 1812 was spending his unhappy boyhood in London and passing through experiences which were to inspire him throughout his life many of you must have read his novels and you will see that the background of all his novels were actually autobiographical everything that he had seen in his life the way that children were being exploited the way that the conditions of of industry was so poor was all written by Charles Dickens Charles Kingsley was also a school boy at Bristol had his first days of social unrest of the time when he witnessed the fierce riots in the city at the time of the reform bill. So, there is no better guide to early Victorian London if you want to understand what was London like it was not only from the pamphlets from the newspapers you read the novels of Charles Dickens then Charles Dickens and the upper stratum of London society are more faithfully pictured by Thackeray who was also one of his peers by reason of his better knowledge. The early years saw the awakening of democratic London and therefore, when we see the meaning of democratic London democracy with all its ideals of individualism we find that collectivism and individualism were two streams of thought crossing and recrossing one another in a writing in the writings of the time even in John Stuart Mill not to talk of John Stuart Mill we have the other essays of the time. Therefore, when we try to see the Victorian period as a whole what two factors stand out too prominently one was the steady advance of democratic ideals very true and the progress of scientific thought both of this powerfully affected and were affected in their turn by the literature of the age. For many the late Victorian period was merely an extension at least on the surface of the influence of the procedures there was the social and political theory then we have the political writing of authors like Carl Marx and Frederick Engels empowered the working class to imagine itself in control of the industry that made it possible. The final decade of the Victorian period which was just a preview of the modernist periods which we will do in lecture 7 marked the high point both of English industry and imperial control and of challenges to that industry and imperialism. I had repeatedly told you in this lectures that when we do each separate age please try to see how one age goes into the other it is not that one age completely different from the other but there are tenets which are so similar and there are tenets which go against it which ultimately lead to new developments. Even while British Empire building continued to great energy in Africa and India in England many were starting to see the beginning of the end of the era. Gone was trust in Victorian propriety and morality towards the end. So, the snobbishness this prodigionist there was a revolt against that there was a reaction against that instead many writer stuck to the end of century post weary yet with optimism of forward progress. This is a painting by Ford Maddox Brown and the literary characteristics which we look into now. Let us see the 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature. Not only in British literature we find that in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia we have great thinkers, we have great idealist, we have great philosophers who have contributed to the history of ideas. First though the age produced many poets that too who deserve to rank among the greatest nevertheless was Tennyson and Browning but nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose. The age of newspaper, the magazine, the periodical and the modern novel and the novel in this age feels a place which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth. So, let us go back into all these preceding ages and we see that each age had its distinctive characteristics does not it and we find that the age of Shakespeare was the age of drama as well as poetry. We find the classical age of prose and we find here specially in the romantic period the age of poetry again and not only poetry also of different pamphlets but here it is even though poetry had different big names to it the novel in this age feels a place in which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth and never before in any age or language was the novel appeared in such numbers in such perfection. There was a huge reading public, there was the huge I mean output of novel writing and there was because it was more or less commercial. So, the second mark characteristic of the age was this definite moral purpose, it was not art for art sake, it was almost literature was for life sake or for some purpose and both in prose and in poetry seems to depart from the purely artistic standard of art for art sake and to actuated by definite moral purpose as you see in Tennyson, we see in Browning, we see in the works of Carlisle, we see in the works of John Ruskin. Perhaps for this reason the Victorian age is emphatically also an age of realism, age of prose, age of the novel rather than of romance. So, there was advances in printing technology, publishers could provide more text or various kinds to more people and even Charles Dickens, he published his work not in book first, but in surreal forms short fiction therefore, tried during the Victorian period and novel was perhaps the most prevalent genre of the time. Its morality nearly all observers of the Victorian age are struck by the extreme deference to the conventions, it was thought indecorous for a man to smoke in public or a lady to ride a bicycle. So, many people thought that there was the age was a sort of a posier right, to a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the grossness of the earlier residency. Tennyson is the most conspicuous example in poetry creating the previously complacent sound Gallowhead and King Arthur Dickens perhaps the most representative of the Victorian novelists, but there was this revolt as I told you many writers protested against the deadening effects of the conventions. Carla and Matthew Arnold in their different accents were loud in their denunciations, Thakurin Avatar had of satirizing the snobbishness of the age and Browning's mannerisms were so intellectual and there was indirect challenge to the diction of the age. It remained for Thomas Hardy later as a novelist to pull aside the Victorian veil and shutters and with the large tolerance of the mustard to regards man action with open gauge. While prose fiction was the most widely as we have said circulated kind of writing poetry retain its iconic status as very high literature. Poets of the period range widely in the subject matter some sought to revive mythic themes Arthurian region for example, while others turned a critical eye to the industrial abuses of the present. Well, so we come to the poetry of the time the poets of the Victorian age and first to address would be Alfred Tennyson from 1801 to 1892. Poet Laureate at the death of Wordsworth in 1850 Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry throughout the entire Victorian period. In this wonderful variety of his verse he says this all the qualities of England's greatest poems. So, this is where we find that it is almost like memory, memories of the preceding ages come back in his poetry. The reminisce of Spencer in that of the Elizabethan age, the majesty of Milton, the grandeur of Milton is there, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth of the romantic age, the fantasy of Blake, pre-romantics and colorage, the melody of Keats and Shelley very much like Keats and Shelley especially in the rhythm of his poetry, the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron. Perhaps the most love of Fultonson work is the ideals of the king and in memoriam which on account of both his theme and exquisite workmanship is one of the few immortal names that were not born to die. Everyone associates Tennyson with in memoriam. The immediate occasion of this remarkable poem was Tennyson's profound personal grief at the death of his friend Helen. The Idols of the King ranks among the greatest of Tennyson's later works. Its general subject is the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his knights of the round table and the chief source of the materialist melodies, Moe de Arthur. He is remembered for different, different poems, the dramatic lyric dishes, loxley halls, and Gallaghert. One of the most famous in the series is Enoch Arden. Yet the theme of each is the orderly development of law. Whatever the theme may be, we find that there is a law that governs his world, whether it is natural or the spiritual world. Tennyson is essentially the artist. He used to take care, take great care in the craftsmanship of his poems. No other in his days studied the art of poetry, so constantly as he. The strong and noble spirit of his life is reflected in one of his best known poems, Crossing the Bar, which was written in his 81st year towards the end, which a desire should be placed at the end of his collected words. Sunset, an evening star, and one clear call for me. At May, there be no mourning in the bar when I put out to say, this is just an excerpt from the poem. We next come to the other great poet of the time, Robert Browning, 1812 to 1889. And Brown's place in English richer, Browning's place in English richer will be better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson. And Browning is as much introspective, as much obscure, and as much intellectual when compared to Tennyson's transparency or his different ways of how he narrated his poems. In one respect at least, these poems are in perfect accord. Each finds in doubt the supreme purpose and meaning of life. So, if we ask you to study the Victorian poets, it will be natural for you to pick up either Tennyson or Browning. And you will find a contrast which is there in each one's style of versification. Tennyson is first the artist and then the teacher. But with Browning, the message is always the important thing and his careless to careless of the form in which it is expressed. Again, Tennyson is under the influence of the romantic revival, as we have seen, and so does his subjects daintily, weather, and in Browning's net, Browning's net takes in calmly and ugly subjects with equal pleasure and aims to show that truth lies hidden in both the evil and the good. And many see that Browning can be compared even with Shakespeare in the way that he analyzed human nature, the psychology of the psyche, the psychology of the mind, the psychology of human actions. And therefore, even though they are very dissimilar, many term that in the understanding of human nature, he is equal to almost Shakespeare. And but it was the obscurity of his style that always earned him a little bit of popularity. His fill was the individual soul, never exactly alike in any two men. It was so varied and it was so deep. And he sought to express the hidden motives and principles which govern individual action, different mental associations as students. I would want you to read Browning's poems on artists, on different characters of Dara Nasa, and you will find that these are interesting ideas of how human nature unfolds. No other poet is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of man. Browning is the most stimulating poet in English literature for his joy of life, his robust faith and his invincible optimism. His first known work Pauline was in 1833 and later he had written Paracelsus and not till Soudello was published in 1840. Did he attract attention enough to be denounced for the obscurity and puncturies of his style? Robert Browning is remembered also for another instance. Six years later in 1846, he suddenly became famous, not because he published Belles and Pomegranates, but because he eloped with the best known literary woman in England, Elizabeth Barrett, whose fame was for many years, both before and after her marriage, much greater than Browning or Tennyson and then who was at first considered superior even than Tennyson. For 15 years Browning and his wife lived in Pisa and in Florence. We will come back to Elizabeth Barrett later, but with the publication of the Ring and the Book in 1868, he was at last recognized by his countrymen as one of the greatest of English poets. So, though he had remained in Italy for most of the time, though Italy offered him an honored resting place, England claimed him of her own and he lives buried beside Tennyson in Westminster Abbey. Here we have Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, picture of them. Indeed, all his poems may be divided into three classes. Why do we read Browning? It is not only because of the great insight he had into human nature, but also because of the way that he brought dramatic characteristics into poetry and that was called a dramatic monologue or the dramatic lyrics and it can be divided into three classes. They are pure dramas like Stratford and a Blot in the Scuttion, dramatic narratives like Pippa passes and dramatic lyrics like The Last Ride Together. You will really enjoy reading this lyrics which are short poems expressing some strong personal emotion and his best known volumes contain the dramatic lyrics, then the dramatic romances and lyrics, man and women, dramatic persona, suggest how strong the dramatic element is in all his work. So, this dramatic power which we find in the poetry of the time lies in depicting what he himself calls the history of the soul. History is enormous and brings all sorts and conditions of men under analysis. What type of men did he analyze? The magician in air folklore, please read that too. It is a beautiful dramatic lyric monologue. The artist in Andrea del Sato, what is the creative process in the artist My Last Dust is a wonderful poem. The early Christian in the death in the desert, the Arab horsemen in Muttka, the sailor in Herbiciel, the medieval knight in child rolling, the Hebrew in soul, the Greek in Balasustian's adventure, monster in Caliban, the immortal dead in Causes. You can see the variety of people that he that themes that he analyzed. Pippa passes one of the longer poems aside from Israel Poetical Politics, the study of unconscious interest. It is a beautiful poem and the idea of the poem was suggested to Browning while listening to a gypsy girl singing in the woods near his home. I think most of you know this the years at the spring and days at the mornings at seven, the hillsides Dupal, the lurks on the wing, the snails on the torn, gods in his heaven, also right with the world, you must have come across this lines, but never knew that it was Robert Browning. And the ring and the book is Browning's masterpiece. It is an immense poem twice as long as Paradise Lost, yes, and the series of monologues in which the same story is told nine different times by different actors in the drama. So, when we look at Browning and Tennyson, we see always that it is the contrast with Tennyson. And the contrast is almost striking when we remember that Browning's essentially scientific attitude was taken by a man who refused to study science. Tennyson, whose work is always artistic, never studied art, but was devoted to the sciences. While Browning, whose work was seldom artistic in form, thought that art was the most suitable subject for men's study. So, it was almost like the Kunstal Roman, how the creative process works in a man and how he went into the different ways of the creative process, whether it was in the musician, whether it was in the artist, whether it was in different types of men. So, their respective messages we find, Tennyson's message reflects the growing order of the age, where there was need of disorder and is summed up in the word law. In his view, the individual will must be suppressed, the self must always be subordinate. And occasionally, he suggests open her in his mixture of faith and pessimism. While Browning is the triumph of the individual will over all the obstacles. They make interesting contrast and therefore, Victorian age is dominated by these two stalwarts, where one says the individual will has to be suppressed, another says I can and I will. Therefore, the different trends which goes into the Victorian age. Browning is therefore, far more radically English than is Tennyson. Because of his invincible will and optimism, Browning is at present regarded as the poet who has spoken the strongest word of faith to an age of doubt. Even now, he is the most popular poet, apart from Shakespeare, Keats and Byron. And we find that among the minor poets, we had already mentioned Elizabeth Barrett Browning occupies perhaps the highest place in popular favour, exquisite love poems, especially the sonnets from the Portuguese. And this exquisite romance of their love is preserved in her sonnets from the Portuguese. I will just quote a few lines. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. It is the famous sonnet from sonnets from the Portuguese. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when filling out of sight for the ends of being an ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need by sun and candlelight. I love thee with the breath, smile tears of all my life and if God shows I shall but love thee better after that. We have now another group of poets who had gone against the trend. We have Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 to 1882. He was distinguished both as a painter and as a poet. So, the role of aesthetics come here. It was the end of the Victorian age, the role of art, the role of architecture, the role of painting, visual art, visual culture. He was a leader in the pre-reflect movement and it seems at first that this trend in poetry was apart from Victorian literature. It is concerned primarily with neither democratic idols nor with scientific and philosophical problems. Its chief concern was with art and simplicity and exquisite spiritual quality are characteristics of the idols of the pre-reflect. We have Christina Rossetti, William Morris who were trying to show most interesting combination of literary man and artist. Poetry for them was not concerned with dialectics but with aesthetics with form, with beauty, with sight, with how you look at the world. We come to Swinburne again chronologically the last of the Victorian poets. Of course, we have Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh-Claw etcetera but even then Swinburne as an artist in tactic, we have found his Atlanta in Khalid and a beautiful literary drama model on the Greek tragedy. And these are great giants, we cannot say that they are minor poets. They in their own turn had brought in different attributes of Victorian poetry. Matthew Arnold when you look at him as a poet, as a critic, we find that he has the mood of doubt and sorrow. Intellectual by his crystal clear style, his scientific spirit of inquiry and compassion. Arnold's literary work divides itself into three periods, the poetical, the critical, and the practical, specially known for his essays and critics. Approach literature with the single desire to find what he said that culture is the best which has been taught and said in the world, his famous lines. Now the most representative therefore, Victorian makers of voice, who are they? Tennyson, Robert Browning or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, while lacking the fire and air of the romantics had in their own way excelled in a breadth of outlook and variety of method. We have seen how they had experimented with form, while in prose the Victorian age is second to none for his rich complexity and vain humanity. Well, so as we had said earlier, the most popular form of literature was the novel. Victorian age is known as the age of the novel and the novel is responded with a will and who dominates the entire Victorian age and specially that the area of novel is Charles Dickens 1812 to 1870, but for the motley multitude that pour through the streets, for the whole and corner places of the city, for London as an incomprehensible, terrifying, fascinating, delightful personality. This is from Compton-Rouquette, every brick and stone alive with tragic humor Dickens remains unrivaled. If you want to see London of the times, then Dickens is unrivaled. He was poor, he was brought out as a suffering child, was helping to support a syphilis family by pasting labels on blacking bottles, slipping on the counter like a homeless cat and once a week immediately approaching the big prison where his father was confined. In 1836 his Pickwick was published and his life was changed as if a musician had waved his wane over him. This is Dickens, acknowledged literary hero of England, so the acknowledged literary hero of England is Charles Dickens. His third novel is Nicholas Nicolle, indeed in most of his remaining words, the principles of his first book giving a smirk. Many people thought that he was writing in the comic veil, but the comic veil was a veil of course of the irony that a satire on the living condition, injustice and suffering on the other. He was the idol of immense audiences which gathered to applaud him wherever he appeared. He enjoyed the popularity of his time and there is also the striking contrast between the novelists and the poets that while the whole tendency of the age was towards realism, it was precisely by emphasizing oddities and absurdities. The foibles by making caricatures rather than characters that Dickens first achieved his popularity. Many thought that it was in the comic vein as I have already told you. Thereafter no matter what he wrote Dickens was labeled a humorist mingling humor and pathos tears and laughter as we find them in life itself. He introduced very odious, very evil characters and made vice more hateful by contrasting it with innocence and virtue. His famous masterpiece is David Copperfield. Then we have A Tale of Two Cities. We have Bleak House, Dumbie and Son, Old Curiosity Shop, Heart Times, Great Expectations. It was not only that he wrote novels of his times. He also wrote holiday stories after the year 1843. He devoted one little work to furnish a Christmas story for his readers. Famous of them is The Cricket on the Heart, The Chimes and above all the unrivaled Christmas Carol. Yes, you should read those stories and you will find that it really gives a pristine beauty to the festival. Next to him was William McPistachry, 1811 to 1863 and he depict situation of a more middle class. He was well brought out. He came from which affluent family just a contrast with Dickens. His first of all a realist who pays life as he sees it. He also is satirical influenced doubtless by 18th century literature. But many people say that he is a master of a pure and simple English and many people say that especially in this age in the Victorian age the role of the identity of men, the Englishmen as it is may be trying to show in his imperialism or in his writings in the way that the national identity is being shown was also reflected in the writings of the time. And therefore, the English flavor or the English tone of temper was being shown very markedly in Thackery. The safe difference between the two novelists however is not one of environment, but one of temperament. It was not just as we contrast Tennyson and Browning. We also play side by side Brown Dickens and Thackery and his vanity fair that he began to be recognized as one of the great novelists of his day the advent of the historical novel. Then we have Pendenis in 1850 Henry S. Men in 1852 and the New Combs in 1855. We also have Charles de Bordray and Emily Bronte the sisters while Dickens and Thackery were vitalizing town life. We find Charles de Bronte in a lonely northern home was finding literary outlet for desperation and longings of sensitive insurgent womanhood. The woman writers who were writing about provincial life are famous novel J. N. R. and Villate which was tragic in its own form, but you find a more remarkable personality was a sister Emily Bronte in whom the wildness and loneliness of the Yorkshire Moes, the heats seem to become personified. Her book the only book that she wrote Wuthering Heights is a classic in 1847 in sheer force of imagination. I hope you read it. It has been framed many times and it is a classic by its own in sheer romanticism, in sheer passion, in sheer involvement with the characters. You will find that it is unrivaled especially the character of Catherine and Hitquiff and elemental passions, but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. These are some pictures of the Bronte sisters Emily in the middle, Charles de Bronte. Other novelists very equally also up to the mark Samuel Butler produced novels that are rising the Victorian ethos. Then we have Robert Louis Stevenson. You may be very familiar with them. Louis Carroll, I think many of you have read Alice's adventures in Wonderland through the looking dust, George Elliot pen name of Mary and Evans. She was the first novelist to lead the stretch wholly upon character rather than incident. The Mill on the Flows, Silas Moiner. I have a doubt that you have read this novelist or read the stories, but even then I hope you will go and look them up in your free time Middle March. Yet as we said that it was a huge output of the novelist. We have Elizabeth Gaskell, we have Wilkie Collins, George Meredith, Anthony Trullo. By the end of the period the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment, but also the primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problem. We have at the end of it who stands on the borderline between the modernist as well as the Victorian Thomas Hardy. Who in his later years has returned to first writing interesting and vital as his poetry is. It is as a storyteller of life in Thomas Hardy's profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh punishing middle and country he called Wessex. Imaginary name that he gave the south west of London as he said happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain. Array inside into simple uncultured elemental nature. Nature comes out as a different dominating character. It is almost like an environmental text. Eco critics nowadays read his novels and Wordsworth's poetry from the standpoint of eco criticism and he depicts the primal things of life to deli with old world customs to pain men and women as victims or inevitable outcome of certain environmental causes. That was the aim of Hardy. His famous novels Greenwood tree under the greenwood tree far from the madding crowd deaths of the D.R. So, now we come to us then a series of the Victorian age who are the who are a huge great icons in their own place. Macaulay, Carlisle, Arnand, Newman and so when we look at the closer approximation of literature to social life it is very marked in the Victorian era. Kingsley wrote passionate social tracks in the guise of a story. Thackeray whom you know as a novelist is known in English literature as an assays his English humorist and the four Georges among the finest assays of the 19th century. Of course, we have Carlisle who wrote about the philosophy of clothes of the excursions into German literature and European history. His Sartre Sartre's and his heroes and hero worships were landmarks in the time and his work belongs only in part to the Victorian era probably, but with the exception of Sartre Sartre's his most characteristic work was published during that time. One of the most notable are heroes and hero worship. We come to John Ruskin who had influenced so many writers in his time who had influenced almost the trend in looking at life and art in different way and he did a great job in bringing the plastic arts and the art of architecture before the general reader. So, we see another current which is coming in from the pre-reflects. We have John Ruskin who talks about painting, who talks about the exchanges between the visual and the verbal and the relation between art and nature. The imaginative and ethical influence of great art was expatiated upon by Ruskin in his famous modern painters than the seven lamps of architecture and stones of Venice. With all the illustrative eloquence his style would give it. Students of design, students of art you might go and read this and you will find it very revealing. His later writings form on to this last you remember that this was a text which had influenced Gandhi a lot. Ruskin starting as critic of the art of painting turns in the new century to the more complex art of life and no man of letters has tackled industrial problems with greater insight and more brilliant suggestiveness than he has done. Among the religious writers of the age we have to mention John Henry Newman. He was a member of the Oxford movement. His most widely read work Apology of Pro Vitasua was written in answer to an unfortunate attack by Charles Kingly. Then we have John Eddington Simons author of Dara Nasa in Italy and of many critical essays. We have Walter Peter again another aesthetic icon whose appreciations and numerous other works mark him as one of a best literary critics. Many of them say that he was he took off from Ruskin and Leslie Slavin Stephen famous for his work on the monumental dictionary of national biography and for his hours in a library a series of impartial and excellent criticism. So, therefore we find just now we mention Cardinal Newman and we find that the religious and ethical thought the Oxford movement as it was called was the most word noteworthy advance and therefore we have a new education acts where making a certain measure of education compulsory rapidly produced an enormous reading public and the sipping of printing paper increased the demand for Brooks so that the production was multiplied. So, we come to the end where we mentioned the scientist among the most famous writers of the age where the scientist Lyle Darwin Huxley Spencer Tendall and Wallace a wonderful group of men whose works having exercised an incalculable influence on a life and literature. This is nearer to your stream nearer to your work and you will find that the epoch making book Darwin's origin of speeches the theory of evolution which had such an impact on all areas of study Wallace's Darwinism and Huxley's autobiography especially it was the end of the Victorian period let us not forget the playwrights like George Bonaccio and Oscar Wilde began to reflect in an increasingly satirical way the pretentious values and behavior that they saw Victorian life. So, it was a sort of satire but it was true the vein of comedy musical theatre in Britain at that time culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Salomon you must have heard about them and were followed in the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. The first musical comedies were there it came into prominence during this time and Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period while plays in particular stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times even now he is right like George Bonaccio who goes into some of his plays goes into the modern period some into the Victorian and whilst 1895 comic masterpiece the importance of being honest is still regarded as a masterpiece of with that paradoxical wisdom. So, summing up we see that the Victorian age was not one but single or unified because it was an age of paradox and power it was a huge long period 63 years approximately and the Catholicism of the Oxford movement you have seen the rise of utilitarianism socialism Darwinism scientific agnosticism where all in their own ways characteristic the Victorian we have the profiting writings of Carlisle and Ruskin we have the criticism of Arnold we have the poetry of of Tennyson and Browning and the realism of George Eliot and George Bonaccio many may correct our judgment of this as a material age and looking at the literature which expresses our faith in man may judge the Victorian age to be on the whole the noblest and most inspiring in the history of the world. The Victorian age was characterized therefore, by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere whether it was in medical scientific and technological knowledge and therefore, over time this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood. So, when we studied this age let us look into this background about the changes which are there and let us see how it is changes also reflected in the literature of the period with the benefit of insight we can see the 1890s as a transitional phase we will be going into the next phase in the next lecture the modernist period and between the optimism and promise of the Victorian period and the modernist movement and during which artists began to challenge just how genuine that optimism and promise had been in the first place for discussion therefore, let us see how what were the different trends which Victorian age was characterized by how it was by rapid change and developments and only in that sphere should we be able to look into this age it is a vast age and therefore, it would be nice to see how in every field whether it is in poetry whether it is in a novel whether in the essay in the in the in the scientific field we find that there have been many strides. If you want to look into Tennyson's life you will have to see that it is itself a open book and we have to see his safe works how he develops if we look into Browning he is almost compared to Shakespeare we see his dramatic lyrics his dramatic models beautiful presentation portraits of man and you can almost say that Freud had also written during this time and the psychoanalysis and the way that people thought about man and relationships was something that he had the extraordinary and Dickens of course, was absolutely different different what experiences in defense life are reflected in his novel you can look at each novel that it is autobiographical in the way that he relates the realistic portrayals of different characters which are the George Eliot we read Silas Manor and make a brief analysis and we find that all these have different ways of how he she made the characters the style and move Ruskin of course, in different ways of modern society in the way that Ruskin brought in the way the exchanges between between art and literature between architecture and the aesthetic movement and the salient features of the Victorian age I hope you have enjoyed this lecture next we will go into the modernist refer text Edward Albert most of it has come from Compton Richard GM traveling English social history a survey of six centuries it is a necessary book which allows you to understand the social history of the type that with this is a critical history of English literature William J. Long's English literature his history and its significance thank you.