Concetti Chiave
- The Victorian era, also known as "the age of Fiction," saw novels surpass theatre in popularity among the middle class, with a clear distinction between quality literature and melodramatic clichés.
- Serialization became prevalent, with novels published in episodes in magazines, leading to increased popularity of prose over poetry in the Victorian Age.
- Charles Dickens, a key figure of the Victorian era, used his novels to critique societal injustices and inequalities, focusing on emotional storytelling and psychological depth.
- While Dickens highlighted the struggles of the middle and working classes, Thackeray used satire to criticize the selfishness and corruption of the upper middle class.
- The second generation of the Victorian Age introduced authors like Hardy and Yeats, who continued to engage with and critique the evolving social landscape.
What is The Age of Narrative?
The reign of Queen Victoria is also called “the age of Fiction” because fiction became the most important form of entertainment of the middle classes and novels became more popular than theatre.
The quantity of fictions produced increased the gap between “good” and “bad” fiction: bad fiction was based on the repetition of melodramatic clichés from the Gothic tradition and the use of suspense.
Serialization and Popularity
There is a increase of serialisation: the novels were divided in more episodes written in magazines.
Prose was more popular than poetry.
In the Victorian Age there are two main period of fiction:
- Readers and novelist have the same ideas and were optimistic: they trust in progress;
- Novelists saw and denounced the evils of their time but didn’t react against the system;
- Novelists want to represent the real life;
- Characters conformed to the rules that were generally accepted;
- The narrative voice expressed the dominant moral views of the time.
- The shared view between novelists and readers began to break down;
- Writers starts to see the price in progress and start to react against the evil caused by the system;
- Writers were pessimistic and ironic and criticise Victorian values.
Charles Dickens and Social Criticism
The biggest represent of Victorian Age is Charles Dickens. His novels denounces abuses in education, the law and the work in emotional stories. In other novels he denounces the injustice of social institution and the inequalities between rich and poor and his work focus more in psychological aspects.
Readers recognised in novels how themselves felt, thought and experienced.
His novels are open to criticism from a formal point of view; he had an ability to create caricatures.
Thackeray and Social Satire
Another novelist was Thackeray.
Dickens -> describe the life of the middle and the working classes;
Thackeray -> satirising about the upper middle class that was selfish, corrupted, lust for money..
In the second generation of Victorian Age we found Hardy and Yeats.
Domande da interrogazione
- What characterized the "Age of Narrative" during the Victorian era?
The "Age of Narrative" refers to the Victorian era when fiction became the primary form of entertainment for the middle classes, surpassing theatre in popularity. This period saw a rise in serialized novels and a distinction between "good" and "bad" fiction, with the latter often relying on melodramatic clichés and suspense.
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