Literary Tendency of Victorian Literature Special...

Literary tendency of Victorian literature: special reference to Lord Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning 1.1 An Introduction to Victorian Period: The Victorian era is generally agreed to stretch through the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). It was a tremendously exciting period when many artistic styles, literary schools, as well as, social, political and religious movements flourished. It was a time of prosperity, broad imperial expansion, and great political reform. It was also a time, which today we associate with prudishness and repression. Without a doubt, it was an extraordinarily complex age that has sometimes been called the Second English Renaissance. It is, however, also the beginning of Modern Times. During the Victorian†¦show more content†¦John Stuart Mill discussed the relationship between society and the individual in his long essay On Liberty (1859). During the late 1800s, a pessimistic tone appeared in much Victorian poetry and prose. Tennyson considered the intellectual and religious problems of the time in his long poem In Memoriam (1850). Matthew Arnold described his doubts about modern life in such short poems as â€Å"The Scholar-Gypsy† (1853) and â€Å"Dover Beach† (1867). Arnolds most important literary achievements are his critical essays on culture, literature, religion, and society. Many of his essays were collected in Culture and Anarchy (1869). An art movement indicative of this period was the Pre-Raphaelites, which included William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. Also during this period were the Impressionists, the Realists, and the Fauves, though the Pre-Raphaelites were distinctive for being a completely English movement. Queen Victoria reigned over an immense British Empire, and much English literature expresses the experience of Imperialism, from one point of view or another. Perhaps the finest imperialist writer of the late 1800s and early 1900s was Rudyard Kipling. He was a prolific writer of prose and poetry, and he was enormously popular. Kipling was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1907.