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19
(1837-1901)
The literary scene
Aestheticism.
As the century went on, however, other novelists followed
the general anti-Victorian trend. This culminated in the disengagement
of the
Aesthetic Movement,
with its belief in “Art for Art’s sake” – that
is, total detachment from social or moral issues. The Aesthetic creed
derived from the French writer Théophile Gautier’s theory, summed up
in his slogan “L’Art pour l’Art”, which implied that art should have
no
moral basis or purpose
: it is good in its own right, an end in itself.
The movement spread all over Europe during the last part of the 19th
century and became a cultural force in Britain particularly in the 1890s.
Its major representative was
Oscar Wilde
(
➤
p. 95
). He only wrote one
novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891), but it is the most outstanding
work of fiction in the Aesthetic tradition. It was also immensely
successful and its impact on readers hasn’t diminished with time: the
story of the very handsome young man, Dorian Gray, who stays forever
young while the figure in his portrait becomes ugly with vice and age has
attained the status of a modern myth. The philosophy of the book is the
cult of beautiful things
and a proclaimed
indifference to moral and
social issues
: “Art for Art’s sake”, as the Preface to the novel states.
First examples of colonial novels.
The greatest expansion of the British
Empire, in the last quarter of the 19th century, corresponds to the first
examples of novels which both came from and were about the overseas
colonies.
Rudyard Kipling
(
➤
p. 112
) from an early age began writing
about India, its landscapes and peoples, and was the first major writer
to explore the
relations between the British and the Indians
. He never
seems seriously to question the right of the British to be in India – the
typical attitude of many British was that they were there to “take up the
white man’s burden”, in Kipling’s own words, that is to bring civilization
to a far less developed country. Kipling, however, was seriously attached
to and fascinated by the Indian continent. His best-known novel,
Kim
(1901), contains colourful and passionate descriptions of India’s various
races and beliefs.
S
tudy queStionS
1
What are the general characteristics of Realism?
2
Why can it be considered a reaction against the
triumphant Victorian ideology?
3
Explain the two possible readings of Stevenson’s
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
4
What is the setting of Hardy’s Tess? What elements
shape man’s destiny according to Hardy?
5
Who wrote the most outstanding work of fiction in
the Aesthetic tradition? What is the philosophy of the
novel?
6
What did Kipling explore in his novels? How did he
justify British colonization of India?
W
Riting
neS
7
In what way does the late Victorian novel differ from the early Victorian novel, and who are the main representatives
of the two phases? (maximum 200 words)
Oscar Wilde by
the famous French
painter Toulouse-
Lautrec (1895).
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