The main stages of cold war.
PAGE 1 — Victorian Realism
Victorian Realism (1837–1901)
Main authors :
– Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist, Bleak House
– Charlotte Brontë : Jane Eyre
– Emily Brontë : Wuthering Heights
– Virginia Woolf : Mrs Dalloway
➤ Focuses on social issues (poverty, injustice)
➤ Realistic city setting (London)
➤ Precise, vivid description
“Bleak House” — Charles Dickens (1852–3)
Movement in passage : Panoramic → zoom on details
➤ immersive
➤ Circular movement around London, vivid imagery
Metaphors and effects =
“streets… as if the waters had newly retired,”
“as if they were up in a balloon”
➤ Confusion, heaviness
➤ Poor lightning = polluted, dark London
World War I (1914–1918)
“Dulce et Decorum Est” — Wilfred Owen (1918)
Image of physical suffering :
“bent double, coughing like hags, blood-shod”
Image of death :
“he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”
➤ Owen condemns war, exposes suffering and horror
➤ Rejects the idea that dying for one’s country is glorious
PAGE 2 — Gothic Literature
Gothic Literature (1780–1830)
Characteristics :
– medieval settings (castle, corridors, staircases)
– supernatural elements (ghosts, strange house, mystery)
– atmosphere :
fear, uncertainty, suspense
Influenced by :
– Salvator Rosa (light/dark contrast) → Chiaroscuro
– Medieval folklore
Context : fear of plague, war, superstition, religious power.
• Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
➤ Passages with light and shade = “The sun” // “so obscured”
➤ beauty vs. Fear, aesthetic intensity
Creation of mystery = “dark village; limited comfort” = sudden noise, stranger → suspense, tension
➤ Confusing atmosphere, uncertainty about the outcome
Possible headings : Difficult journey / Encounter / Shelter
• Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
➤ Interrogations tormenting the narrator :
regrets, existential fear, moral responsibility, creature’s threat
Terms for the creaton x creature: “my enemy”, “my friend”, “my creation”
→ fear, guilt, hatred
Contrast :
– Parag 5 = turmoil, fear, regret, agitation
– Parag 6 = rational, calm description
PAGE 3 — Romantic Literature
Romantic Literature
Key Authors →
– John Keats (odes and narrative poems)
– Percy Bysshe Shelley (Hymn to Intellectual Beauty)
– Robert Burns (Scottish poems, songs, folklore)
– William Blake (poet + painter)
– William Wordsworth (poet)
• “Daffodils” — William Wordsworth (1804)
➤ Link to nature and expression of feelings
➤ “lonely, fluttering, pensive”
➤ Shows that Romantic literature expresses personal emotions
➤ 4 stanzas = emotion recollected in tranquility
➤ Nature = source of joy, peace, calm recollection
➤ The reader feels serenity as the poet remembers the scene
• “Ozymandias” — P. B. Shelley (1818)
➤ Human pride is temporary = all pride and power collapse
➤ nature and time destroy everything
➤ “nothing beside remains”
Alliteration : “boundless / bare”, “lone / level”, “cold command” → emphasises desolation, emptiness, ruin
➤ Melancholic, pessimistic, loneliness and despair
• Idyllic Art (Henry Andersen painting)
➤ Warm colours = peaceful, joyful
➤ Dancing shepherd, lamb = harmony, happy
/-> Beauty of nature love + simplicity
PAGE 4 —
Characters:
Christian = symbol of faith, Pliable = weak believer (gives up) Helpful = divine assistance (God)
Places:
-Slough of Despond: Despain
-Valley of the Shadow of Death: Danger, Doubt
-Celestial City: Heaven
→ The believer’s journey from Sin to Heaven
→ Reflection on perseverance in faith
*Romantic Period (1790s – 1850s)
• Reaction against classical, (Greeks, Biblical references)
•Focus on emotion, nature, imagination, and individual
• Key authors : William Wordswonth, Samuel Tayler Coleridge.
*William Wordswonth (1802) – Lyrical Ballads
/->Goal: Express genuine human feelings in simple language.
Vocabulary linked to feelings: passion, sympathy, excitements
*Opposed to: social vanity ,false refinement, trivially
- * Poetry must come from real emotion and simplicity not artificial language on social pretension.