1. THE VICTORIAN AGE Queen Victoria (1837-1901) Features of the first part of the Victorian Age:  Faith in progress  Optimism  Moralism  The British Empire  Industrialisation LITERATURE The major literary genre was the NOVEL  Realistic novel  Omniscient intrusive third person narrator  Comments of the author  Happy end  To teach what is right and wrong  To give a moral/judgement  Logical connections in a linear way  Linear chronological concept of time Browning Tennyson Poetry The reader is not free!

2. In the second part of the Victorian Age RELIGIOUS CRISIS Charles Darwin The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead” AESTHETIC MOVEMENT (1880s) “Art for Art’s sake” Art should not have any moral, social or political purpose It rejected the Victorian moral view of literature Men are not a creation of God People could no longer refer to God, but they have to find them by themselves

3. THE FIRST PART OF THE 20th CENTURY World War I New theories Sigmund Freud The Interpretations of Dreams (1899) Carl Jung The Psychology of the Unconscious (1916) A basic element of man’s unconscious mind is formed by his racial memory Albert Einstein General Theory of Relativity (1905) Henri Bergson William James Past and future (as memory and expectation) exist together with the present in people’s mind Space and time do not exist as separate phenomena People’s behaviour depends very largely on the unconscious part of their minds

4. MODERNISM Cultural movement during the first three decades of the 20th century Rejected the old Victorian standards In LITERATURE  How say things (form)  Minimum plot  The eclipse of the narrator  The shift of the point of view  The stream of consciousness technique  Focus on the psychology  Simultaneous concept of time  Poetical language The reader is free to make his personal idea

5. VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) One of the most important Modernist writers Developed a new way of expressing reality:  Technique is important: interior monologue  Omniscient third person narrator (kept to the minimum)  The shift of the point of view  Minimum plot  Connectors  Chronological time (external events)  Simultaneous time (the flux of thoughts)  Poetical language (repetitions, key words, poetical devices, mental images) Mrs Dalloway (1925) No storyline One single day Clarissa Dolloway goes out to buy flowers for the party she is going to give in the evening Omniscient third person narrator Events are seen through the point of view of the various characters

6. JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) One of the most important Modernist writers Ulysses (1922) Dublin, 16 June 1904 (a single day) Three characters (Leopold and Molly Bloom, Stephen) 18 chapters have titles derived from the episodes in the Odyssey by Homer Leopold = Ulysses Molly = Penelope Details of everyday life and the inner life of the characters  Formal aspect is very important  First person narrator  Stream of consciousness technique  No logical connectors  No punctuation  Anaphoric construction  Simultaneous time  Demands a lot to the reader  Joyce is extremely realistic