Appunti di Letteratura Inglese V liceo, Study notes of English

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The romantic spirit.

Pag. 211 : Introduction of the chapter.

Nowadays the word romanticism has acquired different nuance of meanings and we can find in many things

like in:

Cinema, Art (Constable and Turner), Jane Austen, wedding-love etc..

Father of Romanticism are Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth who wrote together in an area

called Lake District a collection of poems : The lyrical ballads (of 1798) as the manifest of Romanticism.

They are also called lake poet because of the place where they took inspiration.

Romantic literature (poems) are divided in first and second generation. (First age optimistic and more

enthusiastic;

second indeed, pessimistic because lived after French Revolution and is disillusioned by it. Member of

second generation died all young and far away from home. They no longer took inspiration only on nature:

they treated theme of individualism, patriotism, art (Greek) exotism.)

Romanticism: The word conveys notions of sentiment, sentimentality, a visionary or realistic lack of reality.

It connotes fantasy and finction.

It born in 18 th^ Century (1700).

Gender most used in this time is poetry.

It rise in reaction of the Enlightment and the storical disappointment.

Pag. 213 : Picture: Wanderer above the sea of Fog.

In the Foreground there is a man wrapped in a dark green velvet overcoat and he’s hanging a walking stick.

His outfit connotes an upper class member or someone who is probably cultivated and has and education.

Romanticism is, infact, an elitist cultural movement.

The man is alone, immersed in this creepy but seductive scenery.

It’s a windy day and a thick fog that cover most of the wild nature (we can see in the middle ground some

other cliffs and perceive some trees) ; the horizon is in indistinguishable because of the fog.

Romantic poet are always alone (sense of melancholy) in this wild nature that attracts but scares man both.

It make you fell small and powerless in front of this sense of hugeness (?) and endless/ infinity and mystery.

The only thing that can accompany/guide is the imagination.

English Romanticism : French Revolution to 1837 (Coronation of Queen Victoria. )

They were all aware of change the world.

Childhood is revalued because children have imagination that with the growing up, people lose more and

more.

We are spoilt by industrialization.

The emphasis of the individual; it is a joyce to be an outcast. React to rules that come from reason.

Conformism is rational and people want to fight against this.

Cult of exotic; unfamiliar, remote (..) attract romantic hero.

In 1800 has been published the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads which contained a preface written by

Wordsworth.

Although they had collaborate together in writing the Lyrical Ballads, they had different rules and thoughts:

Wordsworth was able to describe common things ad they were supernatural

Coleridge, indeed, describes supernatural elements ad if they were natural and real, creating a temporary

suspension of disbelief and rationality.

Object : Daffodils (regarding poem Daffodils)

Poet : He is absent-minded

Sensory experience: Sight, touch, hearing, smelling, taste (In daffodils : trough sight)

Emotion : Joyful emotion (so far he hasn’t written the poem yet)

Contemplation

Memory an recollection in tranquility

He products a “kindred” emotion : He live again

Poem -> Recreates in the reader a similar emotion.

The poet is like a man but with a great sensibility that permits him to penetrate the soul of object and lead

our attention to everything life (Humble people are like children)

POEM : MY HEART LEAPS UP :

One stanza of 9 lines which 3 are indented and short.

Immediately our attention goes to this line.

Repetition, anaphora, alliteration.

Semantic area is related to nature : sky, rainbow.

There are three stage of human life.

Sensory experience : sight of rainbow which struck him.

“I’d rather die if I loose my sensation and imagination” My heart MUST leaps up anyway. CHILD IS

FATHER OF THE MAN.

Coleridge is from first generation; his most famous work is a ballad called the Rime of the ancient mariner.

It’s a ballad divided in 7 part that opens with an argument that summarize the ballad.

It took inspiration from middle age.

This ballad has the same qualities of a ballad.

Setting : boundless see which is without order in sunny days and night lit but the moon.

The actions take place in a huge see (ocean).

Characters : protagonist -> ancient/ old mariner (sailor man) who is the speaking voice and tells his story of

a crime he committed; this mariner has supernatural powers.

The listener is a wedding guest and he was going to a wedding but the sailor man stopped him but he doesn’t

want to listen him. At first the sailorman obliges the boy, then he ipnotize him.

Even if we are not interested to the story then we are strucked by that and we are supposed to be the wedding

guest.

The atmosphere is full of mystery, supernatural dreamlike element.

The language: in order to give this idea of past, Coleridge use an archaic English full of rhetoric figures and

he added an alternation of dialogue and narration.

Layout: 4 line stanzas and every line starts with the capital letter , punctuation.

There are some comments by author like stage directions.

Sound is characterized by a lot of alliteration, incremental repetition, internal rhyme and ONOMATOPEA.

The mariner describes the story -> departure of the ships from harbor.

The description is extremely realistic.

It’s a very happy and cheerful atmosphere.

The ship leaves the harbor while leaving they see the church, the hiss and the lighthouse stop: it’s a very

realistic description.

Another realistic indication : the ship has overcome the equator.

45_ Paragone la nave ad una persona che sta scappando e l’inseguitore è talmente vicino che gli calpesta

l’ombra così la persona è costretta a chinarsi davanti.

50_at this point ship has reached equator. Around them there are no creatures , the storm led them and they

had a glacier.

they see the albatross that flew around and round the mariner. While, before the ship was imprisoned, the ice

broke and the ship could sail trough the sea. Cheerful situation.

The ship could finally gone to North, led by wind.

There are different meanings and interpretation about this story.

2)Relation with nature, death, allegory of life : ballad.

Crew : mankind (umanità)

ship : microcosm

albatross : our pact with god

killing the albatross : evil did of a single person that falls on others.

3. Moral parable of the original sin followed by the punishment, repentance, penitence and redentation

4. Poem a dream caused by optium : Coleridge suffered rheumatism , pain of bones.

5. The albatross may represent the poem and mankind kills him.

Every evil action takes place during the day, every kind action during the night.

Sun : Reason

Night : Irrationality.

Nature not pantheistic.

Primary imagination -> everyone has a faculty of imagination

Secondary imagination -> imagination of the poet.

This portrait emphasizes British powerful , glorious past.

Sunset -> the end of glory of an époque that is going to end.

It’s like a ghost ship.

The ship represent the past, too

Tug boat industrial revolution (pollution), it’s like a water beetle.

This explain why there is the sunset as THE END OF AN EPOQUE.

There are some inaccuracies.

Prevalence of nature on human manufacts.

Turner framed the ship in a triangular shape of sky.

He had different attitude towards industrial revolution. Sometimes he celebrates the machine age.

Rain steam and speed, the sky cover most of the canvas.

Steam train -> celebrating.

Rowing boat, bridge (It could be a sunset.)

GEORGE GORDON BYRON also called Lord Byron as he was aristocratic: he belonged to the second

generation of romantic poet so he shared the same qualities of romantic poets of the second generation:

• He died young, away from home.
• He was attracted by the beauty of nature
• He appreciated a tempestuous life in fact he died in Greece where he fight for independence. His body is

buried somewhere different from heart.

Byron invented the Byronic hero.

Traditional Romantic heroes tend to be defined by their rejection or questioning of standard social

conventions and norms of behavior, their alienation from larger society, their focus on the self as the center

of existence, and their ability to inspire others to commit acts of good and kindness. Romantic heroes are not

idealized heroes, but imperfect and often flawed individuals who, despite their sometimes less than savory

personalities, often behave in a heroic manner. Lord Byron developed the archetype of the Byronic hero in

response to his boredom with traditional and Romantic heroic literary characters.

Byronic heroes are marked not only by their outright rejection of traditional heroic virtues and values but

also their remarkable intelligence and cunning, strong feelings of affection and hatred, impulsiveness, strong

sensual desires, moodiness, cynicism, dark humor, and morbid sensibilities.

Byronic heroes also tend to appear larger than life, and dress and style themselves in elaborate costumes for

the purpose of making themselves as different from others as possible.

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

LAYOUT : 3 stanzas of 6 lines for each stanza which starts with a capital letter (Capitalization).

There is a lot of punctuation above of all commas.

Each stanzas terms with a full stop, the last indeed with an exclamation Mark.

Alternate Rhyme an a slow rhythm due to the commas that gives a sense of musicality too.

Alliteration and anaphora. Enjambament.

There is a sense of harmony, calm and balance due to precision.

(Simily).

It starts giving an idea of exotism : idea of the beauty that is far away from home, England-

Perfect combination of opposites : darkness and light (that comes in the woman aspect).

She has a raven tress but a light lights her face.

She is extremely in peace with the world. She is serene, pure, calm and blameless.

Mourning dress : vestito di lutto.

The woman really existed and she is the Byron’s wife’s cousin who Byron met at a party and fell in love

with.

All the words are referred to her beauty.

There is the typical romantic idea that inner beauty is related to outer beauty : what appears beauty outside,

so it is inside. The outer beauty mirrors the inner beauty.

Romantic idea expressed : sense of harmony; idea of perfection (opposite creates a perfect balance).

The beauty of a lady come from her internal serenity.

There is a sense of regret of the poet because he regrets the purity, blameless, ingenuity he had lost due his

life.

Innocence and serenity state of peace are state of mind he had lost.

He repeats the same order -> sense of balance -> perfect beauty.

of all art. thus the world of Greek beliefs lives again in his verse, re-created and re-interpreted with the eyes of a Romantic. His first apprehension of beauty proceeds from the senses, from the concreteness of physical sensations. All the senses, not only the nobler ones, sight and hearing, as in Wordsworth’s poetry, are involved in this process. This physical beauty is caught in all the forms nature acquires, in the colours it displays, in the sweetness of its perfumes, in the curves of a flower, in a woman. Beauty can also produce a much deeper experience of joy, as Keats affirmed in the opening line of Endymion , “A thing of Beauty is a Joy for ever” , and it introduces a sort of spiritual beauty, that is the one of love, friendship and poetry. These two kinds of beauty are closely interwoven, since the former linked to life, enjoyment, decay and death, is the expression of the latter, related to eternity. Thus through poetry Keats is also able to reach something that he believes to be permanent and unchanging in a world characterised by mortality and sorrow. Besides the idea of the immortality of beauty, Keats also formulated a theory of “negative capability”, the ability to experience “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. When a man can rely on this negative capability, he is able to seek sensation, which is the basis of knowledge since it leads to beauty and truth, and allows him to render it through poetry. This is a new view of the poet’s task.

__

With Keats there is a romantic revaluation of sensation, concept of the writer. He was able to combined elements in a very individual way : typical romantic subjects : he gave a personal touch.

Life: He was born in a wealthy family but both his mother and father died so he experienced death. He studied medicine and he was going to be a surgeon, then he approached to the poetic world; He wasn’t successful at the beginning but he was helped by a review. Shelley and Keats were close. 1818 -> It marks the beginning of his career as he wrote large part of his poems among which the Endymion (the most important work of the poet). In 1820 he begin to suffer the first symptoms of tuberculosis and he was suggested to come to Italy (especially in Rome there still is his house). He died in February 1828. His poems are not a projection of his life but personal experiences are the source of his writing. “I” -> Universal. He puts humanity at the centre of his attention. (?) He concentrates on BEAUTY -> Joy comes from beauty.

He doesn’t share Wordsworth’s pantheistic view.

Imagination is a supreme value : the words he describes are artificial.

He describes what he likes things to be.

Art as a form of beauty (“Art for art’s sake” : il bello per il bello, l’arte per l’arte).

He took inspiration from classic age.

He is a forerunner of aesthetic writers.

ALL senses -> perception -> poetry that appeals of all senses.

Beauty of senses and spiritual beauty (love or friendship) : while physical beauty will decay and die, spiritual

beauty may last forever.

“Beauty is truth and truth is beauty”.

Negative capability : Skill to deny certainties and identify himself with the object he describes/from he takes

inspiration.

VICTORIAN AGE

Queen Victoria was crown in 1837 and her reign last until 1901.

Picture: living room is over furnished as the bourgeois wanted to show their wealthy (During this time there

is the beginning of this phenomena (that there is nowadays).

For this reason, middle class is at the centre (of the attention(?) in this time and there is a major involvement

of the industrial revolution as there is a growing demand and (so) a growing production.

In contrast with the wealthy of the middle class, there were a lot of poverty : there were social problems in

turns of distribution of wealth and wealthy people pretended to forget about the problem of working class.

Victorian compromise.

It was a complex and contradictory era: it was the age of progress, stability, great social reforms but it was

also charactersised by povertà, injustice and social unrest. The Victorians promoted a code of values that

reflect the world as they wantede it to be, not as it really was, based on personal duty, hard work,

respectability and charity. In thi periods was very important to work hard for improve the society. The idea of

respectability distinguished the middle from lower class. Respectability was a mixture of both morality and

hipocrisy, severety and conformity to social standards. It implied the possesion of good manners, the

ownership of confortable house with servants and a carriage, regualr attendance at church, and charity

activity.

Philanthropy was a wide phenomenon: the rich middle class expolited the poor ruthlesssly and at the same

time managed to help “stay children, fallen woman and drunk men”.

The husband represented the autority and the key role of woman regarded the education of children and the

hosework.

Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms, and prudery in its most extreme

manifestations led to denunciation of nudity in art, and the rejection of words with sexual connotation from

everyday vocabulary.

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SCHEDE : Queen Victoria became queen at the age of 18; she was graceful and SELF ASSUED. Her reign was the longest in British history. In 1840 she married a German prince, Albert of Saxe-Coburg: it was a love marriage and they brought nine children and their modest family life provided a model of respectability. (Christmas tree was imported by the prince). During this time Britain changed dramatically.

There is the growth of British empire : England expanded his Empire (“The sun never sets on England”) -> Canada, Australia, N.Zealand, Hong Kong, India etc.... Economy interest : Britain imported raw materials and exported finished goods to countries. By the mid of 1800 Britain was the largest exporter and importer -> wealthiest country. Because of Whiteman -> duty to colonize.

Queen Victoria understood that it was the moment of granting reforms. (Before Queen V.).

1832 : First reforms act granted the vote to almost all male members of middle class. 1833 : The factory act regulated child labour in factories. 1834 : Poor law amendment established a system of workhouses for poor people. 1867 : The second Reform act gave the vote to skilled working med 1871 : Trade union act legalised trades unions (sindacati). 1884 : The Third reforms act granted the right to vote to all male householders.

pretend not to know what it is happening.

“A Christmas Carol” -> Victorian Christmas. 295 Birth of Victorian custom and tradition. The Christmas tree was imported by the husband of Queen Victoria -> Place of Great Exhibition.

At that time Christmas wasn’t so popular because workers couldn’t enjoy celebration and the puritans considered Christmas a popish celebration (a tradition of Christians).

It had a period of splendour at 19 Century, though. Christmas Carol is a novel by Charles Dickens; which was an architects of Christmas. Christmas Cards that are on displays of fireplace ad tell us the news regarding the family. Cracker started to be produced at this year. Typical Christmas meals, silent night.

Great manufactures understood the economic potentiality of Christmas so they started to announce the arrival of Christmas with the window glass / window dressing. The high street (to go window shopping) : figure of Santa clause Santa Grotto in Christmas centre (Selfridge). The religious meaning of Christmas -> conners trade (..) by the turn of the century it happens. After II World War commercialism slew down but when it started to produce again Christmas arose againe thanks to televition, too. Dickens is the architect of Christmas tradition.

Scrooge is the protagonist of the novel and there is a redention of the protagonist.

Patronising attitude toward readers of Dickens who make us fell upset, worried, happy extremely sad when he wants. Everything is freeze around him and there is a comparison with Scrooge andthe weather. Sometimes rain was more gentle than him. Nobody talked to him, neither the beggars.

Victorian Novel: For the first time there was a commune interest between writers and readers. Dickens wasn’t a social reform : he was a reporter, denouncing what happened in cities.

Women at that time started to write (p.300).

The limit of Dickens is, in his opinion, something is Bad or Good and it’s impossible it is both of them. Except of Scrooge (and few? others ) usually main characters are flat. In Dickens Novel London is a character, city become a symbol wherein people humiliate\debase\degrade themselves or sing. (?)

L’educazione vittoriana. 1844 : 1 Education Act -> Ragged School-> (scuola per gli “straccioni”). Six and half days of school for Children working in factory. 1870 : Education Act -> Forster’s education act (not compulsory ) 5-12 years. 1880 : Schooling became mandatory at the age of 10. 1889 : Compulsory until the age of 12 1891 : School became free (they had to pay before this act). 1893 : Blind and deaf children could go to school\ were “allowed” to-at (??) school 1899 : Defective and epilective children.

Going to School in Victorian Times

Although there had been schools dated back as far as the 6th Century many Victorian boys and girls did not have the opportunity of going to school. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 education was still mainly for the privileged. Rich children might have a governess to teach them at home until they were old enough — if they were boys — to go to Public Schools such as Rugby (mentioned in the book, Tom Brown's Schooldays). The girls continued to be educated at home. Most poor children did not go to day school, but earlier, Robert Raikes had started a system of education based in churches, the Sunday School, and by 1831 1,250,000 children went to lessons in this way. That was about a quarter of the population at the time. Later in Queen Victoria's reign a number of day schools had begun, including the British Schools, and the Ragged Schools (so called because of the tattered clothes worn by poor pupils). In 1870 a law was passed saying that children aged between 5 and 10 had to attend weekday school. The leaving age was raised to 11 in 1893. Even so, many children were kept away from school by parents and employers who would rather have them earning money.

The Victorian School

Many schools were quite grim places, often with windows high up so that children could not see out. They were drab by modern standards, with very little on the walls except perhaps a stern text. Boys and girls generally were separated, having their own entrance and playground. Even though in smaller schools boys and girls were taught in the same classroom they would still sit separately. Some classes were very big, for example the British School in Hitchin has a classroom for 300 boys! Village schools would have had smaller classes, but often classes had a very wide age range. Because the school classes were so big, everything had to be done in a regimented way. The teacher would write things on the blackboard which was copied into books and learned. A lot of teaching was repetition, learning the names and dates of kings and queens, or reciting the "times" table.

The Victorian Teacher

Teachers were often strict and by modern standards very scary. Children soon learnt to do what the teacher asked, otherwise they would get a rap across the knuckles with a ruler, or a clip around the ears. Teaching was often the job of unmarried ladies (that's why you call the teacher Miss), and when you married you stopped teaching. Fewer men taught because pay was poor. Most teachers were not qualified by having a college education, they learnt "on the job" in a sort of apprenticeship. When it came to school leaving age, those with aptitude could stay on as "pupil teachers" where they would help the teacher in exchange for lessons. Some larger schools used a system of monitors. The teacher would select a number of the brightest boys and they would then be taught by the headmaster in separate lessons after school. The next day these monitors then took a group of boys each and taught them the things they themselves had just learned.

Victorian Child Punishment

The Victorian teacher would use a cane to punish naughty children. The cane was given on the hand or the bottom, or sometimes given across the back of the legs. In public schools even prefects would carry and use a cane. All sorts of things might be punished: being rude, answering back, speaking out of turn, poor work, in fact anything that displeased the teacher. Children who had been caned usually kept quiet about it because if their parents found out they would probably be punished again. In Scotland a leather strap called a tawse was used in place of the cane. Other punishments were given including lines and detentions, and some, if not all, the

Playtime!

Although most of the Victorian school child's life was rather dull, the bright light was playtime. Children would play with a wide variety of toys: hoops, tops, skipping ropes and marbles. There would be games of tag, British bulldog, hopscotch, and football, played with an inflated pig's bladder.

Empress : Victoria was the ruler of an enormous empire; Britain acquired enormous areas of the world and it was becoming a powerful and enormous empire : it brought its culture in colonies. This began to develop the idea in Britain that there was the duty of white men to colonize other culture : “white men’s burden” ; this idea born in 1600 – 1700 (Daniel Defoe).

P. 324 : Queen’s presenting a black men the Bible , in sign of this idea. In 1857 Indian mutiny : Queen Victoria crown as empress. Boer War : Dutch men, as they wanted to control gold and diamond mines, in South Africa that fight against Britain which won.

Victorian age : opening of Suez Canal. (Canal : artificial\ Channel : natural ) The expansion was a slow colonization often made thanks of trade , like in India. The idea of nationalism developed very fast.

Another element which incremented the idea of a Great Britain ahead of the world was the Greenwich time that contributed to give the idea of England’s supremacy. (When England began to crumble in the twentieth century, it pours in literature, culture, mentality of English men)

Crime and Violence, in sign of Victorian compromise.

Victorians believed in progress, thank to this problem could be solved. Law and order were values. People were scared by crime (because of social unjust) -> they thought there was a solution. Prison Act : prigioni statali, new police forces (administrated by Parliament). The press started to manipulate readers.

Theme of Double Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde : homophone of hide (evil, bad, crime part) Dr. Jekyll : Society, Respectability, rational part. Appearance. Contrast between what appears and what it is in real.

Literature always mirrors \ denounce \ critic the social situation : In this case this the social phenomenon is the Victorian Compromise : Differences between rich\ wealth \ progress and the social unjust, poor situation etc : there was double attitude towards poverty like hypocrisy and charity (rich people also pretended not to know bad situation of poor people). (Controversies in terms of morality too).

The main theme is the dichotomy between appearance and real; intimate feelings are always hidden to the public because Victorian society was built on tradition and conventions: outside everything had to be perfect while bad actions committed had to be hidden and locked in a room.

DOUBLE : Second self-alter ego that depend on first self but it is not subordinated. When character realizes he can’t hide and control evil part, he commits suicide. (He took a poison and he could turn in Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. )

When the protagonist is Dr. Jekyll moves in the wealthier part of London and when he’s Mr. Hyde, he moves \ stays \ appears in slums of London; setting changes according to the protagonist.

Other novel like Stevenson’s : Art of Darkness, Dorian Grey, Frankenstein

Analysis p. 339. Third person narrator with a neutral point of view that turns, in the second part, in a first person narrator with Mr. Enfield point of view. Mr Atterson is the typical Victorian Men who belonged to middle class and his behavior is cold, austere and backward in sentiment (2-3) he’s tolerant but not so inclined to help. He has a relationship with mr. Enfield based on habit that was a ceremonial; they are nothing that habit. Appearance matter more than feelings.

Little Man was something horried, he is a monster and he does evil actions and he provoked curiosity.

Stevenson is an example of Bohemian, what goes against (above all) respectability.

P. 347 Last decades of XIX Century spread a growing sense of frustration and uncertainty of artists, pessimism and dissatisfaction. It was an era characterized by materialism that emphasized goods and wealth. They can’t stant anymore on this morality.

Gautier. They refused morality and preferred beauty (Keats is the forerunner of this movement). They react against sociality, respectability. “Art for Art’s sake”. Beauty above everything. Dante Gabriel Rossetti : corrispettivo di Gautier. They took ispiration before Raphael. Medieval Art was considered more precise in detail and naturalistic. Romantic of I-II generation.

arts and craft : art applied to industrial.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was born in London, his father was a professional refugee (Italian). He founded the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood -> art+personal. Concept of art -> he anticipate symbolism and impressionism Decorative richness.

“La Ghirlandaia” is an example of his art; the painting portrays a beautiful young woman that looks like Queen Elizabeth as she has curly red hair (symbol of sensuality –like flowers too- and origin of England) and

desires). Scared by double. Il messaggio morale che manda è più forte che il suo.

Picture of Dorian Grey. Second half of 1800. Protagonist are three man (triangular relationship) : Dorian, Basil (painter) and Lord Henry. They are both attracted to Dorian. Basil makes a painting of Dorian. Lord Henry was the symbol of evil, since his nickname, of devil.

Dorian: Doric -> artistic beauty. EXTERNAL. Grey : mixture of black and white. INTERNAL.

Dorian became/Lord makes him aware of his beauty (superior beauty), so he made a wish as he wanted to be young forever and he wanted a life with high sensation. (Faust myth.) Desires became true and he remained forever young.

He hides (in the school room : rimuovere parte della sua vita) the portrait when it changed (ruga). Portrait becomes more and more ugly. Physical beauty which is different from internal beauty. A lot of fact. Basil wants to see the portrait : Dorian stabs the painting. Witness of moral corruption. Magically Grey gets old all of a sudden and dies. Art never change.

Narrative technique: external narrator who tells the story but he doesn’t interfere. Dorian point of view. Dialogue. Characters are revealed by dialog. (Typical technique of dialog.)

III Prova :

• When : Mid 19 th^ Century.
• Where (England)
• (^) What artistic field : Art – painting
• What did it influenced : Literature
• What did it advocate : New models, genuine representation of nature
• Who : Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Consequences : Criticism of contemporary society, materialism.
• Example: Ghirlandaia.

Victorian Age Queen Victoria (1837 – 1901)

Edwardian Age (son) Edward VII (1902 – 1910)

He took the name of his mother’s husband, Saxe Cobourg Gotha (Dynasty). First of all he modernized the monarchy; he brought new life and a sense of fun to a gloomy court (Victorian was a widow and she spent her life –after her husband’s death- sadly; she always dressed in black etc..). He made parties at Buckingham Palace, organizing social meeting and he redecorated the lifestyle. He first introduced motor car. He named a life style (Furniture… etc… ).

He signed a treaty with France, the “Entent Cordial” : England could pursue - extend its interest in Egypt and France in Marocco. This agreement of mutual support and respect avoided a war.

Socially speaking it’s very similar to Victorian Age but some differences started to spread out. In 1906 Liberal party won the election and they promoted a number of reforms for working class.

• Old age pension
• Minimum Wages
• Children’s charter (granted a basic help for children, food …).

It sees movements of suffragette : Emmeline Pankhurst became the leader of the national union (P_ 406); they fought for vote and for women’s value. (They obtained vote on 1916).

All values started to crumble.

World War I (son) George V (1910 – 1936) -> when he died