British Literature an der Universität Hamburg

1760-1850

1764:  Invention of Spinning Jenny by James Hargreaves

Ending: 

innovation favoured over traditionalism

interest in spontaneous feeling

interest in the natural world and the individual’s relationship

poet as a spiritually gifted genius

interest in the supernatural world (goth novel)

interest in the past (mediaevalism) (goth)

interest in the limits of experience (Confession of an English Opium Eater)

defined by Uvedale Price as occupying an intermediate position between the sublime and the beautiful

a way of looking at the natural world as if it were a painting

landscape paintings may show the scope of nature but they are also limited by their frame

M. G. Lewis, The Monk: A Romance (1796)

explicit threats

(gross) violence

visceral experience

1837: Queen Victoria’s accession to the British throne

1832: First Reform Act

• beginning of transformation of Britain’s social structure
• abolition of “rotten boroughs” (areas with small electorate and disproportionate representation)

• relative extension of franchise (right to vote)

1867: Second Reform Act

• extended the franchise to male members of the working class

1884: Third Reform Act

• extended franchise to almost all male Britons

The novel

during Victoria’s reign, some 3,500 authors published a total of 40,000 novels in Britain alone

consistent increase in novels published throughout the century (up to 1750: 100 per year; by 1825: 600 per year; by 1900: 6,000 per year)

separation of home and workplace resulted in a valorisation of the home (Woman as ‘Angel in the House’)

public sphere gendered as male, domestic sphere as female

cult of domesticity

self-reflexive playfulness

irony and parody as fundamental cultural attitudes

the collapse of the distinction between high and low art

interest in pastiche (imitation and mingling of earlier fashions and style)

disavowal of ‘grand narratives’ (metanarratives)

blurring between reality and hyper-reality

a penchant for non-linear narratives

the predominance of visual culture

tendency towards disorientation

Modernism as a European literary movement from 1890 to 1940 (with its heyday in the 1920s)

stylistic term to denote a way of representing the world