19th century in literature
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
| Revision as of 15:18, 9 November 2008 Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) ← Previous diff |
Revision as of 08:44, 19 August 2019 Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) Next diff → |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| - | [[Image:Edgar Allan Poe.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Edgar Allan Poe]] is an [[icon]] of [[19th century in literature|19th century literature]]]] | + | [[Image:A Th. Dostoiewski by Vallotton.jpg|thumb|200px|left|[[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] (1821 – 1881) |
| + | <br>Illustration: ''[[A Th. Dostoiewski]]'' (1895) by [[Félix Vallotton]]]] | ||
| + | [[Image:Edgar Allan Poe.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Edgar Allan Poe]] (1809 – 1849) is an [[icon]] of [[19th century in literature|19th century literature]]]] | ||
| + | [[Image:Charles Baudelaire.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Charles Baudelaire]] (1821 – 1867) (portrait by [[Etienne Carjat]], ca. [[1863]])]] | ||
| + | |||
| {{Template}} | {{Template}} | ||
| - | :''[[Notes on 19th century in literature terminology]], [[French literature of the 19th century]], [[Russian literature of the 19th century]]'' | + | The [[19th century]] was perhaps the most [[literary]] of all centuries, because not only were the forms of [[novel]], [[short story]] and [[serial|magazine serial]] all in existence side-by-side with [[theatre]] and [[opera]], but since film, radio and television did not yet exist, the popularity of the written word and its direct enactment were at their height. Major trends included [[Romanticism]], the [[Decadent movement]], [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]], [[Literary realism|Realism]] and [[Symbolist literature|Symbolist literature]]. |
| - | The [[19th century]] was perhaps the most [[literary]] of all centuries, because not only were the forms of [[novel]], [[short story]] and [[serial|magazine serial]] all in existence side-by-side with [[theatre]] and [[opera]], but since film, radio and television did not yet exist, the popularity of the written word and its direct enactment were at their height. See [[wood pulp]] and [[literacy]]. | + | On the democratization of literature, [[Resa L. Dudovitz]] notes: |
| - | == Trends == | + | :"By the mid-nineteenth century [[cheap]]er [[edition]]s and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the [[arbiters of taste]], the critical [[elite]] could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property." |
| - | [[Romanticism]] - | + | |
| - | [[Decadent movement]] - [[Naturalism]] - [[Realism]] - [[French literature|French 19th century literature]] - [[Symbolism|Symbolist literature]] | + | |
| + | An excellent public domain overview of 19th century literature is found in Danish critic Georg Brandes's ''[[Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature]]''. | ||
| + | == Short overview == | ||
| - | == Titles == | + | [[Literature]] of the [[19th century]] refers to [[world literature]] produced during the [[19th century]]. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, [[literature]] written from (roughly) [[1799]] to [[1900]]. Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other aspects of [[19th century]] culture. |
| - | [[The Crimes of Love]] (1800) - [[The Devil's Elixir]] (1815/16) - [[The Sandman]] (1817) - [[Frankenstein]] (1818) - [[Confessions of an English Opium Eater]] (1821) - [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame]] (1831) - [[Le Rouge et le Noir]] (1831) - [[Gamiani]] (1833 - [[Viy]] (1835) - [[Histoires extraordinaires]] (1840s) - [[Bartleby the Scrivener]] (1853) - [[Les Fleurs du mal]] (1857) - [[Madame Bovary]] (1857) - [[On Wine and Hashish]] (1851) - [[Artificial Paradises]] (1860) - [[Salammbô]] (1862) - [[The Painter of Modern Life]] (1863) - [[Notes from Underground]] (1864) - [[Le Spleen de Paris]] (1869) - [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]] (1865) - [[Venus in Furs]] (1870) - [[Carmilla]] (1872) - [[The Temptation of Saint Anthony]] (1874) - [[Les Diaboliques]] (The She-Devils) (1874) - [[Anna Karenina]] (1877) - [[Index Librorum Prohibitorum]] (1877) - [[Flatland]] (1884) - [[À rebours]] (1884) - [[The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]] (1886) - [[Psychopathia Sexualis]] (1886) - [[The Picture of Dorian Gray]] (1890) - [[La Bête humaine]] (1890) - [[Hunger (novel)|Hunger]] (1890) - [[New Grub Street]] (1891) - [[The Yellow Wallpaper]] (1892) - [[Jude the Obscure]] (1895) - [[The Island of Dr. Moreau]] (1896) - [[Dracula]] (1897) - [[The She Devils]] (1898) - [[Torture Garden]] (1899) | + | |
| - | == The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions == | + | In Germany, the ''[[Sturm und Drang]]'' period of the late 18th century merges into a [[Classicism|Classicist]] and [[Romanticism|Romantic]] period, epitomized by the long era of [[Goethe]]'s activity, covering the first third of the century. The conservative ''[[Biedermeier]]'' style conflicts with the radical ''[[Vormärz]]'' in the turbulent period separating the end of the Napoleonic wars from the [[Revolutions of 1848]]. |
| - | At the beginning of the seventeenth century the novel had been a genre of [[realism (arts)|realism]] fighting the [[romance (genre)|romance]] with its wild fantasies. The novel had turned first to scandal before undergoing reform over the last decades of the eighteenth century. Fiction eventually became the most honourable field of literature. This development culminated in a wave of novels of fantasy at the turn of the nineteenth century. [[Sensibility]] was heightened in these novels. Women, overwrought and prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed one, became the heroines of the new world of "romances" and "[[gothic novel]]s" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favorite setting of the gothic novel. | + | In Britain, the 19th century is dominated by the [[Victorian era]], characterized by [[Romanticism]], with [[Romantic poetry|Romantic poets]] such as [[William Wordsworth]], [[Lord Byron]] or [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] and genres such as the [[gothic novel]] and the [[fashionable novel]]. |
| - | The classic gothic novel is [[Ann Radcliffe]]’s ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'' (1794). As in other gothic novels, the notion of the ''[[sublime (philosophy)|sublime]]'' is central. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was ''awful'' (literally, "awe-inspiring") and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. Gothic characters and landscapes rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine the great exception. The "beautiful" heroine's susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and [[problematizes]] what came to be seen as [[hypersensibility]]. | + | In the later 19th century, Romanticism is countered by [[Literary realism|Realism]] and [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]]. The late 19th century, known as the ''[[Belle Époque]]'', with its ''[[Fin de siècle]]'' retrospectively appeared as a "golden age" of European culture, cut short by the outbreak of [[World War I]] in 1914. |
| - | At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the overwrought emotions of sensibility, as expressed through the gothic sublime, had run their course. [[Jane Austen]] with ''[[Northanger Abbey]]'' (1803) parodied the gothic novel, reflecting its death. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writing, the "[[comedy of manners]]". Her novels often are not only funny, and particularly likely to satirize individuals of high social status, but they also display a wariness of city influences which are often portrayed as having a tendency to corrupt established social values. Her best known novel, ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'' (1811), is her happiest, and has been a blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction. Austen's novels still retain a wide following, despite the distance between their heroines' dilemmas and those of the reader today. | + | == Titles == |
| + | [[The Crimes of Love]] (1800) - [[The Devil's Elixir]] (1815/16) - [[The Sandman]] (1817) - [[Frankenstein]] (1818) - [[Confessions of an English Opium Eater]] (1821) - [[Histoire de ma vie]] (1822) - [[The Lustful Turk]] (1828) - [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame]] (1831) - [[Le Rouge et le Noir]] (1831) - [[Gamiani]] (1833) - [[Viy]] (1835) - [[Histoires extraordinaires]] (1840s) - [[Bartleby the Scrivener]] (1853) - [[Les Fleurs du mal]] (1857) - [[Madame Bovary]] (1857) - [[On Wine and Hashish]] (1851) - [[Artificial Paradises]] (1860) - [[Salammbô]] (1862) - [[The Painter of Modern Life]] (1863) - [[Notes from Underground]] (1864) - [[Le Spleen de Paris]] (1869) - [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]] (1865) - [[Venus in Furs]] (1870) - [[Carmilla]] (1872) - [[The Temptation of Saint Anthony]] (1874) - [[Les Diaboliques]] (The She-Devils) (1874) - [[Anna Karenina]] (1877) - [[Index Librorum Prohibitorum]] (1877) - [[Flatland]] (1884) - [[À rebours]] (1884) - [[The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]] (1886) - [[Psychopathia Sexualis]] (1886) - [[The Picture of Dorian Gray]] (1890) - [[La Bête humaine]] (1890) - [[Hunger (novel)|Hunger]] (1890) - [[New Grub Street]] (1891) - [[The Yellow Wallpaper]] (1892) - [[Jude the Obscure]] (1895) - [[The Island of Dr. Moreau]] (1896) - [[Dracula]] (1897) - [[The She Devils]] (1898) - [[Torture Garden]] (1899) | ||
| - | == Russian literature == | + | == By language == |
| - | The 19th century is traditionally referred to as the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. | + | * [[French literature of the 19th century]] |
| - | [[Romanticism]] permitted a flowering of especially poetic talent: the names of [[Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky|Zhukovsky]] and [[Aleksandr Pushkin]] came to the fore, followed by [[Mikhail Lermontov]] and [[Fyodor Tyutchev]]. | + | * [[Russian literature of the 19th century]] |
| + | * [[Golden Age of Russian Poetry]] | ||
| + | * [[British literature of the 19th century]] | ||
| - | Nineteenth-century developments included [[Ivan Krylov]] the fabulist; non-fiction writers such as [[Belinsky]] and [[Alexander Herzen|Herzen]]; playwrights such as [[Alexandr Griboyedov|Griboedov]] and [[Alexandr Ostrovsky|Ostrovsky]]; poets such as [[Evgeny Baratynsky]], [[Konstantin Batyushkov]], [[Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov]], [[Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy]], [[Fyodor Tyutchev]], and [[Afanasij Fet]]; [[Kozma Prutkov]] (a collective pen name) the satirist; and a group of widely recognised novelists such as [[Nikolai Gogol]], [[Leo Tolstoy]], [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]], [[Nikolai Leskov|Leskov]], [[Ivan Turgenev]], [[Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin|Saltykov-Shchedrin]] and [[Ivan Goncharov|Goncharov]]. | + | ==Printing industry== |
| + | :''[[printing industry]]'' | ||
| + | Paper remained relatively [[expensive]] through the centuries, until the advent of [[steam]]-driven paper making machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with [[wood pulp]]. Although older machines predated it, the [[Fourdrinier Machine|Fourdrinier]] paper making machine became the basis for most modern papermaking. Together with the invention of the practical [[fountain pen]] and the mass produced [[pencil]] of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary [[printing press]], wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available to all the members of an industrial society by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters became universal. The [[clerk]], or writer, ceased to be a high-status job, and by 1850 had nearly become an office worker or [[white-collar worker]] , which transformation can be considered as a part of the [[industrial revolution]]. | ||
| - | The influence of Pushkin cannot be overstated. He is credited with both crystalizing the literary Russian language and introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature. His best-known work is a novel in verse, [[Eugene Onegin]]. In the field of the novel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in particular were titanic figures, and have remained internationally renowned, to the point that many scholars have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever. | + | Unfortunately, the original wood-based paper was more acidic and more prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as [[slow fires]]. Documents written on more expensive [[rag paper]] were more stable. Mass-market paperback books still use these cheaper mechanical papers (see below), but the more careful book publishers now use [[acid-free paper]] for [[hardback]] and [[trade paperback]] books. |
| - | == Realism in French 19th century literature == | + | |
| - | See [[French_literature_of_the_19th_century#Realism|Realism in French literature of the 19th century]] | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | + | ||
| - | + | ||
| - | == Wood pulp in stead of linen pulp (late 19th century) == | + | |
| - | *[[Paper]] and [[wood pulp]] | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | == Realism in French 19th century literature == | + | |
| - | :See [[French literature of the 19th century]] | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | The expression "[[realism (arts)|Realism]]", when applied to literature of the 19th century, implies the attempt to depict contemporary life and society. The growth of realism is linked to the development of science (especially biology), history and the social sciences and to the growth of [[industrialism]] and commerce. The "realist" tendency is not necessarily anti-romantic; romanticism in France often affirmed the common man and the natural setting (such as the peasant stories of [[George Sand]]) and concerned itself with historical forces and periods (as in the work of historian [[Jules Michelet]]). | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | The novels of [[Stendhal]] (including ''[[The Red and the Black]]'' and ''[[The Charterhouse of Parma]]'') address issues of their contemporary society while also using themes and characters derived from the romantic movement. [[Honoré de Balzac]] is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction. His ''[[La Comédie humaine]]'', a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction -- nothing less than a complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism also appears in the works of [[Alexandre Dumas, fils]]. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | Many of the novels in this period (including Balzac's) were published in newspapers in serial form, and the immensely popular realist "roman feuilleton" tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life (crime, police spies, criminal slang), as in the novels of [[Eugène Sue]]. Similar tendencies appeared in the theatrical [[melodrama]]s of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the [[Grand Guignol]] at the end of the century. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | [[Gustave Flaubert]]'s great novels ''[[Madame Bovary]]'' (1857) -- which reveals the tragic consequences of romanticism on the wife of a provincial doctor -- and ''[[Sentimental Education]]'' represent perhaps the highest stages in the development of French realism, while Flaubert's romanticism is apparent in his fantastic ''[[The Temptation of Saint Anthony]]'' and the baroque and exotic scenes of ancient Carthage in ''[[Salammbô (novel)|Salammbô]]''. | + | |
| - | + | ||
| - | In addition to melodramas, popular and bourgeois theater in the mid-century turned to realism in the "well-made" bourgeois farces of [[Eugène Marin Labiche]] and the moral dramas of [[Émile Augier]]. Also popular were the operettas, farces and comedies of [[Ludovic Halévy]], [[Henri Meilhac]], and, at the turn of the century, [[Georges Feydeau]]. | + | |
| == See also == | == See also == | ||
| - | *[[Late 19th century in literature]] | + | *[[Reading revolution]] |
| + | *[[Literacy]] | ||
| + | *''[[Notes on 19th century in literature terminology]] | ||
| + | *[[The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions]] | ||
| + | *[[Realism in French literature of the 19th century]] | ||
| + | *[[Wood pulp]] in stead of [[linen pulp]] for [[paper]] | ||
| + | *[[List of 19th century writers]] | ||
| + | *[[19th century censorship]] | ||
| + | *[[History of modern literature]] | ||
| - | == By language == | ||
| - | * [[French literature of the 19th century]] | ||
| {{GFDL}} | {{GFDL}} | ||
Revision as of 08:44, 19 August 2019
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The 19th century was perhaps the most literary of all centuries, because not only were the forms of novel, short story and magazine serial all in existence side-by-side with theatre and opera, but since film, radio and television did not yet exist, the popularity of the written word and its direct enactment were at their height. Major trends included Romanticism, the Decadent movement, Naturalism, Realism and Symbolist literature.
On the democratization of literature, Resa L. Dudovitz notes:
- "By the mid-nineteenth century cheaper editions and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the arbiters of taste, the critical elite could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property."
An excellent public domain overview of 19th century literature is found in Danish critic Georg Brandes's Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature.
Contents |
Short overview
Literature of the 19th century refers to world literature produced during the 19th century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1799 to 1900. Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other aspects of 19th century culture.
In Germany, the Sturm und Drang period of the late 18th century merges into a Classicist and Romantic period, epitomized by the long era of Goethe's activity, covering the first third of the century. The conservative Biedermeier style conflicts with the radical Vormärz in the turbulent period separating the end of the Napoleonic wars from the Revolutions of 1848.
In Britain, the 19th century is dominated by the Victorian era, characterized by Romanticism, with Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Lord Byron or Samuel Taylor Coleridge and genres such as the gothic novel and the fashionable novel.
In the later 19th century, Romanticism is countered by Realism and Naturalism. The late 19th century, known as the Belle Époque, with its Fin de siècle retrospectively appeared as a "golden age" of European culture, cut short by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Titles
The Crimes of Love (1800) - The Devil's Elixir (1815/16) - The Sandman (1817) - Frankenstein (1818) - Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) - Histoire de ma vie (1822) - The Lustful Turk (1828) - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) - Le Rouge et le Noir (1831) - Gamiani (1833) - Viy (1835) - Histoires extraordinaires (1840s) - Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) - Les Fleurs du mal (1857) - Madame Bovary (1857) - On Wine and Hashish (1851) - Artificial Paradises (1860) - Salammbô (1862) - The Painter of Modern Life (1863) - Notes from Underground (1864) - Le Spleen de Paris (1869) - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) - Venus in Furs (1870) - Carmilla (1872) - The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874) - Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) (1874) - Anna Karenina (1877) - Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877) - Flatland (1884) - À rebours (1884) - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) - Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - La Bête humaine (1890) - Hunger (1890) - New Grub Street (1891) - The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) - Jude the Obscure (1895) - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - Dracula (1897) - The She Devils (1898) - Torture Garden (1899)
By language
- French literature of the 19th century
- Russian literature of the 19th century
- Golden Age of Russian Poetry
- British literature of the 19th century
Printing industry
Paper remained relatively expensive through the centuries, until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with wood pulp. Although older machines predated it, the Fourdrinier paper making machine became the basis for most modern papermaking. Together with the invention of the practical fountain pen and the mass produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press, wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available to all the members of an industrial society by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters became universal. The clerk, or writer, ceased to be a high-status job, and by 1850 had nearly become an office worker or white-collar worker , which transformation can be considered as a part of the industrial revolution.
Unfortunately, the original wood-based paper was more acidic and more prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as slow fires. Documents written on more expensive rag paper were more stable. Mass-market paperback books still use these cheaper mechanical papers (see below), but the more careful book publishers now use acid-free paper for hardback and trade paperback books.
See also
- Reading revolution
- Literacy
- Notes on 19th century in literature terminology
- The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions
- Realism in French literature of the 19th century
- Wood pulp in stead of linen pulp for paper
- List of 19th century writers
- 19th century censorship
- History of modern literature
