العصر الفكتوري / The victorian Age

[pink.sky]

...

الأدب الفكتوري (1832-1901م)


الملكة فكتوريا ...



أصبحت فكتوريا ملكة بريطانيا عام 1837م؛ واستمر حكمها، الذي يعتبر الأطول في تاريخ إنجلترا، حتى عام 1901م. وتعرف هذه الفترة بالعصر الفكتوري.

شهد العصر الفكتوري تغيّرًا عظيمًا في الاقتصاد والاجتماع والسياسة، حيث وصلت الإمبراطورية البريطانية إلى أوج عظمتها لتغطي حوالي ربع الكرة الأرضية. توسعت التجارة والصناعة بسرعة، وقطعت السكك الحديدية والأقنية المائية البلاد طولاً وعرضًا. وتَقدَّم العلمُ والتكنولوجيا، وكبر حجم الطبقة المتوسطة بشكل هائل. أخذ عدد المثقفين يزداد في الخمسينيات من القرن التاسع عشر الميلادي. إضافة إلى ذلك قدمت الحكومة إصلاحات ديمقراطية، فسمحت، على سبيل المثال، لعدد أكبر من الناس بالتصويت.

بالرغم من رخاء العصر الفكتوري، إلا أن عمال المصانع والمزارع كانوا يعيشون في فقر مدقع. وهذا ما دعا بنجامين ديزرائيلي، وكان من أشهر رؤساء وزراء هذه الفترة، إلى وصف إنجلترا ببلد الأمَّتين، واحدة غنية والثانية فقيرة. كما ظهرت في النصف الثاني من القرن التاسع عشر بعض النظريات العلمية التي بدت وكأنها تتحدى التعاليم الدينية. وأكثر هذه النظريات مثارًا للجدل نظرية النشوء والارتقاء التي قال بها عالم الأحياء تشارلز داروين. قال داروين في كتاب أصل الأنواع (1859م) بأن كل كائن حي قد ارتقى من كائن آخر قبله. بناء عليه بدا وكأن داروين يناقض قصة الإنجيل عن الخلق، وهو ـ أيضًا ـ يخالف ماورد في القرآن الكريم عن خلق الإنسان.

تناول كتّاب العصر الفكتوري التباين بين غنى الطبقتين المتوسطة والعليا وحالة الطبقة الفقيرة المُزرية؛ كما بدأوا في تحليل ضعف الإيمان بالقيم التقليدية في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر الميلادي.



أوليفر تويست رواية من روائع تشارلز ديكنر وقد هاجم فيها الظلم الاجتماعي في العهد الفيكتوري. يعكس هذا المشهد أوليفر وهو يستجدي رئيس دار الأيتام كي يعطيه مزيدًا من الطعام.
الأدب الفكتوري المبكر. يتضمن هذا الأدب بعض أشهر الروايات التي كُتبت في الأدب الإنجليزي. كتب معظم روائيي هذه الفترة أعمالاً طويلة تتضمن شخصيات متنوعة. وفي الكثير من الحالات، ضمَّن المؤلفون حوادث حقيقية في قصصهم.

تشتهر روايات تشارلز ديكنز بشخوصها الغنية والغريبة الأطوار في بعض الأحيان. ففي روايتي أوليفر تويست (1837-1839م) وديفيد كوبرفيلد (1849- 1850م) يصف ديكنزحياة أطفال حولتها قسوة الكبار وغباؤهم إلى جحيم. وصوّر ديكِنز الجانب المظلم للحياة في العصر الفكتوري في البيت الكئيب (1852- 1853م). إذ انتقد في هذه الرواية المحاكم ورجال الدين وإهمال الفقراء.

ألف وليم ميكبيس ثاكاري رائعة الفن القصصي الفكتوري المسماة دار الغرور ( 1847-1848م). تتابع القصة حياة العديد من الأشخاص في المجتمع الإنجليزي من مطلع القرن التاسع عشر في مراحل متنوعة من فترة ما قبل العصر الفكتوري.

تحتوي روايات الأخوات الثلاث لعائلة برونتي وهن إميلي وتشارلوت وآن على العديد من العناصر الرومانسية. وهذه الروايات مشهورة بسبب تصويرها حياة شخصيات معذبة نفسيًا على وجه الخصوص. ويعتبر النقاد رواية إميلي برونتي مرتفعات وذرنج
(1847م) ورواية تشارلوت برونتي جين * (1847م) من أعظم الأعمال الروائية في العصر الفكتوري.

ألف العديد من الكتاب أعمالاً غير قصصية تناولت مساوئ العصر حسب اعتقادهم. مثالاً على ذلك، هاجم توماس كارلايل الطمع والرياء الذي رآه في مجتمعه في كتاب سارتور ريسارتوس (1833-1834م). وبحث جون ستيوارت مل العلاقة بين المجتمع والفرد في مقالته المطولة عن الحرية (1859م).


الأدب الفكتوري اللاحق. ظهر في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر أسلوب متشائم في الكثير من أفضل الأعمال الشعرية والنثرية الفكتورية، فقد بحث اللورد تنيسون مشاكل عصره الدينية والفكرية في قصيدته الطويلة للذكرى (1850م). وعبّر ماثيو آرنولد عن شكِّه في الحياة الحديثة في قصائد قصيرة مثل الغجري ـ العالم (1853م) وشاطئ دوفر (1867م). أما أكثر إنجازات أرنولد الأدبية شهرة فهي مقالاته النقدية عن الحضارة والأدب والدين والمجتمع. وقد جمع العديد من هذه المقالات في كتاب الحضارة والفوضى (1869م).

كان روبرت براونينج واحدًا من أبرز الشعراء الفكتوريين. وقد وضع نماذج دراسة ناجحة للشخصية أطلق عليها اسم المنولوج المسرحي. تسرد القصة في هذه القصائد شخصية خيالية. أشهر أعمال براونينج عمله المسمى الخاتم والكتاب (1868-1869م). وقد بنى القصيدة على قصة اغتيال حدثت في إيطاليا عام 1698م. يتكلم عن القضية في القصيدة اثنتا عشرة ش*، كل من وجهة نظره الخاصة. وكانت زوجته واسمها إليزابيث باريت براونينج شاعرة أيضًا، ألفت سوناتات متتالية عن الحب مهداة إلى زوجها تدعى سوناتات من البرتغالية
(1850م).

كتب جيرارد مانلي هوبكنز أشعارًا دينية تجريبية لم تنشر حتى عام 1918م، بعد ثلاثين عامًا من وفاته تقريبًا. تميز شعره بأسلوب سماه الإيقاع المتوثب حاول فيه محاكاة الحديث الطبيعي. رغم أنه ملأه صورًا غنية ومزيجًا غريبًا من الكلمات. وتعتبر السوناتات العسيرة
(1885م) نموذجًا ممثلاً لأعماله.

كان في مقدمة الروائيين الفكتوريين في هذه الفترة جورج إليوت (الاسم المستعار لماري آن إيفانز)، وجورج مرديث، وتوماس هاردي. تتناول قصص إليوت مشاكل عصرها الاجتماعية والأخلاقية. وتعتبر رائعتها ميدل مارش
(1871-1872م) أفضل أعمالها. وتتميز روايات مرديث وأعماله الشعرية بقدرتها على تناول الشَّخصيات بطريقة نفسية ذكية. تتضمن أهم أعماله روايات محنة ريتشارد فيفاريل (1859م) والأناني (1879م) والسوناتات المتتالية الحب الحديث (1862م). وسيطرت روايات هاردي على الأدب الإنجليزي في نهاية القرن التاسع عشر الميلادي. كتب هاردي قصصًا واقعية ينهزم فيها الأشخاص أمام الأزمات. لقد استخدم مناظر خيالية من منطقة وسكس لتساعده على تهيئة ذلك الجو التأملي الذي تتميز به رواياته مثل عمدة كاستربردج (1886م) وجودي الغامض (1895م). وكان هاردي شاعرًا موهوبًا أيضًا.

بُعثت المسرحية من جديد في نهاية العصر الفكتوري تقريبًا، إذ لم يكن هناك مسرحيات مهمة في إنجلترا منذ أواخر القرن الثامن عشر إلى نهاية القرن التاسع عشر الميلاديين. غير أنه في بداية القرن العشرين، استطاع عدد من كتاب المسرحية بعث الحياة في المسرح الإنجليزي بإنتاج ملاهٍ ذكية ومسرحيات واقعية عن مشاكل العصر الاجتماعية.

استرجع أوسكار وايلد عهد الكوميديا الأخلاقية المتألقة في فترة عودة الملكية بتأليفه مسرحية مروحة الليدي ويندرميرر (1892م) الزوج المثالي (1895م). وكتب جورج برنارد شو مسرحيات ذكية؛ غير أنه كان مهتمًا بالدرجة الأولى بالكشف عن العيوب التي رآها في المجتمع. تتضمن أفضل أعماله التي أنتجها في نهاية القرن التاسع عشر الرجل والسلاح (1894م) وكانديدا (1895م). وكتب السير آرثر وينج باينيرو عددًا من الكوميديات والميلودراما. لكنه بنى شهرته على مسرحيته السيدة تانكري الثانية (1893م) ومسرحيات اجتماعية أ.

المقاله بالانجليزي


the Victorian Age (1832-1901)
Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt


The Victorian period was one fraught with paradox and contrast, a time when the seeds of Modernism were sprinkled liberally upon the intellectual and literary landscapes. It was also a period rife with the tensions of lingering Romanticism and Modernist ideas poised on the horizon. As Matthew Arnold wrote in "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," his was an age "Wandering between two words, one dead,/The Other powerless to be born,/ with nowhere yet to rest my head,/Like these, on earth I wait forlorn" (85-88).

The political/sociological landscape of the time evinced extraordinary change, with all the positive and negative effects of the Industrial Revolution and British Colonialism coming to the fore. Mass transportation, modern modes of communication and manufacturing, a population movement from agrarian to urban locations, the expansion of democratic tendencies in a highly structured class society, and the disturbance to the gender status quo precipitated by what was referred to as the "woman question"--all contributed to the tensions and inconsistencies of the period.

This "in-between," transitional condition of the Victorian period thus engendered the following contrasts and possibly contributed to the oft-thought hypocrisy of some social mores of the times:

1) Optimism versus Pessimism: Note a thread of Romantic idealism still lingered in the poetry of Tennyson at the same time as doubt and depression; see "In Memoriam."

2) Industrial, Technological Advancement versus Workhouse Poverty and Slums in the Cities: Note the novels of Dickens which portrayed the evils of industrialized Britain.

3) Scientific, Medical Advancement versus Superstition and Disease: Note the scientific work of Darwin, Huxley, and Macaulay which portrayed both the enlightenment of the period and engendered doubt and loss of faith.

4) Faith in Democracy and Utilitarian Values versus Distrust in such Democratic Tendencies: Note the revolutionizing Reform Bills of the period--1832, 1867, 1884--juxtaposed with Arnold's disdain of Philistinism and Mammonism and Carlyle's distrust of the "herd" mentality.

5) Belief in the Future versus a Yearning for the Past: Note the 1851 Exhibition highlighting industrial and cultural achievements of the period and the architectural wonder of the modernist Crystal Palace juxtaposed with the literary works of Tennyson with their medieval settings, of Browning with their Renaissance settings, and of the Pre-Raphaelites who looked back toward ages of more predictable ideals and social structures.

6) Religious Faith versus Religious Doubt: Note the Oxford Movement and religious and social writings of Newman contrasted with the darkly naturalistic novels of Hardy.


From these contrasts and inconsistencies, come the major motifs of the age: 1) fragmentation, 2) alienation, 3) loss of values and search for faith, 4) yearning for the past, 5) the "modern malady, or, as Arnold's termed, "this strange disease of Modern life"; 6) regeneration through love and suffering; 7) achievement of ones ends through the means of indirection; and the fortunate fall.


Major Writers of the Victorian Period

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Child prodigy and famed poet before she was 20, Barrett Browning dedicated her poetry to a realistic aesthetic and to social reform. Like ley, she believed that art was not only "a thing of beauty" but a vehicle for social change. Of the social causes that most attracted her, feminism, abolition of slavery, and the ills of the working classes were central. Major works include:
1) "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
2) "The Cry of the Children"
3) Aurora Leigh
Barrett Browning's poetry was immensely influential on the work of such poets as Emily Dickinson.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Poet laureate and premier poet of his age, Tennyson epitomizes the equivocation of his age. His poetry is sometimes light in philosophic content but never fails to offer some of the finest music in English verse after Spenser. Greatly influenced by Keats, Tennyson himself cast a spell upon the Pre-Raphaelites, his verse offering the same attention to detail, extraordinary word color, sensual richness as the paintings of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and William Morris. In this respect, Tennyson, like Keats, is a forerunner of the aestheticism of the fin de siecle. His work offered, as well, a mirror for his own age, thematically expressing:
1) the dilemma of the artist, caught between duty and escape: Lady of Shalott, Palace of Art, and Ulysses;
2) the tension between religious doubt and faith: In Memoriam;
3) love as the redeeming quality of the Universe;
4) conventional Victorian moral strictures of self-knowledge, self-control, duty, etc.;
5) the woman question: The Princess. His most beloved work, if not his best, is Idylls of the King, based on the medieval Arthurian legends.


Robert Browning (1912-1889)
Browning is the master of psychological realism (Prospice) and an experimenter in multiple focus points of view (Pippa Passes). He is also a forerunner of the stream of consciousness narrative style, particularly effective in such poems as My Last Duchess, The Bishop Orders His Tomb, and Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister. Brownings dramatic presentation of character, with its Freudian undertones and satiric irony, is best illustrated in the dramatic monologue. His interest in psychology and in the holes and corners of history can be seen in his magnum opus, The Ring and the Book. For all these reasons, Browning is one of the most influential of the Victorians on modern poetry and prose.


Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Possessing neither the intellect or imagination of Browning nor the musical ear or poetic expertise of Tennyson, Arnold was, nonetheless, the Victorian writer to best express the spirit of his age, its Zeitgeist. Arnold was also an astute critic of his times, distinguishing between the Hebraism (prudish British moral propensities) and Hellenism (sweetness and light); see Culture and Anarchy. The overbearing hyper-morality and narrow-mindedness of the Victorians was summed up in Arnolds deion of Philistinism. (Arnolds ideas were countered by Thomas Huxley in Science and Culture.) Arnold is also responsible for providing in literary criticism the touchstone approach for measuring great works of poetry (The Study of Poetry) and for establishing the critical stance of disinterestedness when evaluating works of art and literature. Like ley, he visualized the poet as a moral legislator, and he gave us a still valid definition of the critic as one who achieves a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world (The Function of Criticism in the Present Time). Arnolds poetry is reflective of many of the darker themes of Victorianism: the questioning of the Romantic nature myth (In Harmony with Nature), alienation and fragmentation (Marguerite poems), the unsettled quality of his time and the modern malady (Dover Beach).

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
First of the Pre-Raphaelites to see publication, Rossetti and her work were long misunderstood--limited and defined by contemporary critics as merely a poet of childrens verse and religious sentiment. However, feminist critics have established the rich sensual and sexual quality of her verse (Goblin Market, as well as her revisionist myth-making tendencies (In the Artists Studio). Her verse has all the qualities of Pre-Raphaelite poetry and painting, in particular in its vibrant color and extraordinary richness of detail. Her most famous poem, Goblin Market can be read as both an affirmation of the Victorian ideal of angel in the house and as a feminist revisioning of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Hopkins is one of the most atypical and interesting of the Victorian poets, his work influenced both by his religious conversion to Catholicism and by his Anglo-Saxon studies. His most important innovation is sprung rhythm--the use of stressed syllables and alliteration to give a springing effect to the poetic line. Hopkins believed that the universe was characterized by the unique designs of myriad individual identities (inscape), with the recognition of this feature (instress) being the central aim of his poetry. Poems such as Pied Beauty, The Windhover, and Gods Grandeur achieve this feature. His most critically acclaimed works are the Terrible Sonnets and The Wreck of the Deutschland.


The Victorian Novelist

The novel genre comes into its own as a major literary type in the Victorian age, forecasting its place of prominence in the 20th Century. Victorian fiction is characterized by the same dichotomies and contrasting tendencies as the poetry. Predominating, however, is the "problem novel" characterized by the work of Dickens, a direct reaction against social ills of the period.


The Brontes
Writing under the pseudonyms Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell, Emily (1818-1846), Charlotte (1816-1855), and Anne (1820-49) Bronte published books that are a blending of Romantic and feminist elements, although Emilys Wuthering Heights in its power and raw energy transcends such labels. The novels are most often characterized as gothic in tone and atmosphere (Charlottes Jane Eyre, Annes Tenant of Wildfell Hall), but there are gender issues that both Anne and Charlotte address in their work. Emily was also a brilliant poet, her poetry addressing such Romantic themes as the wish to escape (Stanzas and Riches I Hold in Light Esteem), the wish to transcend earthly limitations (Alone I Sat)--in many ways she is a female (Victorian) Byron, without the Romantics proclivities for debauchery.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Charles Dickens was perhaps the most beloved writer of his age, devoting the bulk of his work to wonderful satire (Pickwick Papers) and offering an indictment against the social and economic horrors of the Industrial Revolution (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Hard Times). In the tradition of Ben Jonsons comedies of humours and later the Restoration comedies of manners, Dickens offers a world of unforgettable characters and realistic social commentary that did much to engender social reform. As a storyteller, he tends toward melodrama at times, but his prose is often rich with purple passages the best of the century.

George Eliot (1819-1880)
Eliot (Marian Evans) was one of the most intellectual, thought-provoking of the Victorian novelists. At the other end of the spectrum from Jane Austen, Eliot offers a panoramic range of English life, particularly in such novels as Middlemarch. Learned, well-read, and early experiencing religious doubt, she was both a critic of her contemporary society (Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Felix Holt, and Scenes of Clerical Life) and of times past (Romola). Eliots work addresses timeless moral questions as well as contemporary issues such as feminism (Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch).

William Makepiece Thackery (1811-1863)
Thackery is one of the premier satirists of his age. His best novels are characterized by their realism (he saw himself in many ways as a remedy to Dickens) and by their panoramic portrayal of British life (Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond). There is a mocking, cynical tone to his work, and he is apt to portray a more clear-eyed impression of his country and its shortcomings than Dickens, as well as to evince an authorial omniscient point of view that echoes the patriarchal voice of the period.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
The last of the great Victorian novelists, Hardy portrays a naturalistic world where characters stories are determined by happenstance and cruel fate. His novels (The Return of the Native, Tess of the DUrbervilles, The Major of Casterbridge, and Jude the Obscure) present a tragic vision, almost existential angst, with little hope for individuals beyond a stoic acceptance of lifes tragedies. His work in the broadest sense evinces Victorian misgivings and uncertainty prompted by the influence of science, material progress, religious doubt, and industrial and technological developments. When Hardy turned from prose to poetry at the end of the century, he continued these themes that are remarkably modern in tone.



Victorian Non-Fiction

With the advent of such remarkable social change, an array of nonfiction writers came on the scene to comment on the age and its problems and social/political conditions.

Thomas Carlyle (1975-1881)
An early Victorian sage and prophet, Carlyle wrote defiantly against what he considered the negative social, economic, and political tendencies of his time. He rued the loss of spiritual value in mans perception of both himself and the natural world around him, writing of the Universe as one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference (Sartor Resartus). He was offended at the materialism, mammonism, of his contemporaries, at their herd mentality, and at the increasing trend toward secularism (Past and Present). He theorized that the history of the world was neither more nor less than the sum total of the biographies of great men, setting the stage for the superman, or ubermann, that must serve as prophet and forge a destiny for humankind. Some of Carlyles ideas would be criticized in the years after fascism developed in Europe.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Theorizing about education and speculating on his own spiritual doubts, Newman was the consummate prose stylist. His Idea of the University has become the ideal for the liberal arts education, an education that allows one to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze, to refine ones taste, to form ones judgement and to sharpen ones mental vision.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Political philosopher and liberal legislature, Mill is best known for his essays On Liberty and On the Subjection of Women, both written in collaboration with his companion, later his wife Harriet Taylor. Mills father James and his friend Jeremy Bentham were proponents of the Utilitarian philosophy, a materialistic economic philosophy which espoused the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Mill himself was educated in strict adherence to this philosophy (note Dickens satire in Hard Times), and these youthful experiences precipitated later a crisis in his life and depression that caused him to rethink the ideas of his father and attempt to engender the importance of imagination and emotion as necessary for human happiness, as well as a kinder, gentler version of Utilitarianism. Mills Autobiography details his experiences and many of his ideas about society and life. His most significant contribution was to humanize the Utilitarian philosophy of his day and address issues of gender equality.

John Ruskin (1822-1888)
Another polished prose stylist, Ruskin began as an art critic and moved on to social criticism. He was a champion of the work of the pre-Raphaelite painters and J. M. W. Turner (Modern Painters), and much of his speculation about art is connected to his ideas about society and living. In The Stones of Venice from The Seven Lamps of Architecture series, he writes about how architecture reflects the moral values of society--the gothic, for example, is indicative of the purity of national faith and the domestic virtue of medieval society, while Renaissance architecture reveals domestic corruption and moral infidelity. In Unto This Last he attacked the laissez-faire economists and Utilitarian philosophers.


وسلامتكم ادعولي ربي يوفقني وينجحني