The difference in the form of writing impacted the presentation of these literary works and how they were received. Literature from the Victorian period came in all forms and styles, however, for the purpose of this essay, the forms discussed will be limited to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic narrative poem, ‘Aurora Leigh’. Both Stevenson and Browning were able to portray a number of relevant Victorian social attitudes through their chosen literary form such as the duality of humans, the repressive behaviour of Victorian society, concerns regarding scientific advancement and the impact on the old way of life as well as the role and inequality of woman in Victorian times through use of theme, narration style and characterisation. The Victorian era is commonly reflected upon as patriarchal, repressive and pious though, whilst those elements were certainly present in society, to reduce the period to such a narrow stereotype is to overlook much of what was occurring during that time. Victorians were ‘much more diverse and lively’ (Murfin & Ray 496) than they are credited with and the period was rich with change and a challenging of long held
Besides insight into collective societal culture, literary history has provided future writers with models of poetic device, style and content influencing literary works and building upon past literary ideas. Literary history is a vehicle to understanding the past and plays a major role in its influence on literature up to and including the present day. Knowledge of historical literature gives us insight into the traditions and societal conventions of the time in which the piece was written. One outstanding example comes from Anglo-Saxon times. Beowulf is a literary work which enables a reader to glimpse not only the societal customs but into the savage and seemingly uncontrollable environment of the first century.
‘Why is Sixty Lights worthy of critical study and inclusion on the HSC Prescriptions List for module B- Critical Study of Text?’ The novel Sixty Lights has been included on the HSC Prescriptions List for Module B because it is worthy for critical study as it is a diverse piece of literature covering significant topics that have been ignored in the modern world. We enter the lyrical and image-laden world of Sixty Lights. It’s a tale, resplendent in colour and imagery, set across two worlds - the constrained and stilted world of Victorian England, and the chaotic danger and abandon of India. Gail Jones creates literature, like Shakespeare, but in this particular piece explores the significance behind photographs and what they represent.
Bernadette Devlin once said, “To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.” He is saying that to achieve things of great value, it could be essential to sacrifice all other things. Authors often use this theme of loss in their literary works. This statement is supported by the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the dramatic play, “Macbeth,” written by William Shakespeare. These two works of literature support the quote through the use of characterization, conflict, and theme. Characterization refers to the techniques a writer uses to develop characters.
What did modernists hope to achieve? Discuss with reference to one poem and one story – The Love Story of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf Modernism refers to the radical and sudden shift in the post WWI period of the social and cultural views of the public, from Victorian realism to a style with a focus on a profoundly pessimistic picture of a society in chaos. It was brought about by newly developing ideas about how the mind works, by people such as Freud, a shift in politics on issues such as the Great War, and modern industrialisation and beginnings of mass production. This all resulted in a society that for the first time was challenging the norm views about Christianity and revelation, science and the universe and even reality itself.
A Comparative Analysis of New Criticism and Russian Formalism Every age has its theoretical definitions of the nature of literature and its theorized principles on which critical approaches to the analysis of literature are premised. Among many critical approaches, New Criticism and Russian formalism are the earliest and the most preliminary ones. Russian Formalism, mainly produced in the second two decades of the twentieth century, did not have widespread impact until the late 1960s and the 1970s, when it was effectively rediscovered, translated and given currency by Western intellectuals who were themselves part of the newer Marxist and structuralist movements of that period. In this respect, the Russian Formalists belong to a later moment of their reproduction and were mobilized by the new left critics in their assault, precisely, on established literary criticism represented most centrally, in the Anglo-Saxon cultures, by New Criticism and Leavisism. Hence, students of literature brought up in the tradition of Anglo-American New Criticism with its emphasis on “practical criticism” and the organic unity of the text might expect to feel at home with Russian Formalism.
Critics view The Rocking-Horse Winner as an example of Lawrence's most accomplished writing. Lawrence is considered a modernist, a member of a literary school opposed to the literary conventions of nineteenth-century morality, taste, and tradition. Evident in The Rocking-Horse Winner is Lawrence's disdain for conspicuous consumption, crass materialism, and an emotionally distant style of parenting popularly thought to exist in England during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, the story is considered by many to be an example of modernist prose. Author’s Biography David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D.H. Lawrence.
Having a flexible perspective on genre, interpreting emotional truth and reading for literary worth will challenge the obscurity that Fragments would otherwise fall into. The reader must challenge the concept of genre in order to protect Fragments from obscurity. The autobiographical genre of Fragments gives it a certain authority among similar fictional accounts. The author of The Wilkomirski Affair describes this authority as illumination (Maechler 281). When reading an autobiography, readers are drawn to sympathize with the character more so than in a book of pure fiction.
The other is that the author endows unique meanings to a specific thing, which often take a significant place in modern works. In Heart of Darkness, the author adopts the latter. He himself puts an emphasis on symbol and regards that literary works should not be one obvious conclusion, but the rich layer achieved in meaning through the art of symbolism. Conrad utilizes the technique of symbol, leaving the story much room for the reader to imagine and to recreate the text for themselves. The title
T.S Eliot was a primary figure throughout the period of modernism; a time of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I. The modernist writers challenged the linear nature of writing, demonstrated throughout Eliot’s poems where he replaces the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions. The fragmentary nature of the writing results from T.S Eliot’s view (and the modernist view) of the world as fragmented, because in an era characterized by industrialization, rapid social change, advances in science and the social sciences and the loss of traditional beliefs, T.S Eliot and other modernist writers felt a growing isolation and sense of destruction within society. Eliot’s poetry therefore becomes a critique of this new, fractured society in which the loss of traditional values and spiritual purity result in emotion detachment and a sterile, meaningless existence. The first of these societal critiques, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock is written as a dramatic monologue and explores through the voice of its middle-class male speaker a bleak and superficial world bereft of cultural depth and the fulfillment of personal relationships.