Literature of the Victorian Period. Victorian Poetry. Victorian Prose

Aims:

· To study the concept of national sphere of concepts

· To study the notion of concept as a unit of national sphere of concepts

· To study the model of national sphere of concepts

The formalist approach, conceptualizing ethnicity as a type of social process in which notions of cultural difference are communicated, enables us to view ethnicity comparatively, and to account for ethnic phenomena without recourse to crude conceptions of "cultures" and "peoples". It has moreover proven more flexible, and capable of higher theoretical sophistication when dealing with complex contexts, than a related approach in which ethnicity is reduced to a kind of stratification system, or in which ethnic process is virtually by definition reduced to group competition over scarce resources (Despres 1975; Cohen 1974b). Such reduction prevents full understanding of the discriminating characteristics of social systems where the communication of cultural differences is essential to the reproduction of the system.

For all its merits, the formalist approach associated with Barth (1969) has two important limitations preventing a satisfactory comparative understanding of ethnicity.

First - and this is nowadays a common criticism (O'Brien 1986; Wolf 1982; Worsley 1984; Fardon 1987) - it is in principle ahistorical. Its very useful, highly abstract comparative concepts such as ethnic boundary (Barth 1969), dichotomization/complementarization (Eidheim 1971), symbolic form and function (Cohen 1974a), and so on, indispensable in accounting for ethnicity on the interpersonal level, divert analytic attention from the wider social and historical context and thus implicitly disregard processes taking place beyond the grasp of the individual agent. For one should never neglect, or even "bracket", the fact that ethnicity is always a property of a particular social formation in addition to being an aspect of interaction. Variations on this level of social reality, moreover, cannot be accounted for comprehensively through studies of interaction, no matter how detailed they may be. For instance, ethnicity involving a modern national state is qualitatively different from ethnicity activated in a neighbourhood because a state and an individual are different kinds of agents. In addition, the context of interaction is constituted prior to the interaction itself and must therefore form part of the explanation of interpersonal processes. This implies that we ought to investigate the historical and social circumstances in which a particular ethnic configuration has developed, and a subsequent localization in time, place and social scale of the ethnic phenomenon in question must follow. A concept of power distinguishing between individual and structural power is essential here. Moreover, these findings are bound to influence our analysis, and should not be bracketed, even - or perhaps particularly - if the ultimate goal is a reduction of social process to a formal comparative model of ethnicity. On the other hand, historically bounded studies of ethnicity and related phenomena (e.g. Anderson 1983; Smith 1986) usually fail to account for the reproduction of identity on the level of interaction, and have limited comparative scope.

Secondly, and partly by implication, it can be misleading to consider ethnicity simply as an "empty vessel" or a system of arbitrary signs, or a form of deep grammar. Certainly, the "critical focus of investigation" ought to be "the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff it encloses" (Barth 1969:15, italics in the original) - that is, ethnicity is a property of relationship, not "the sound of one hand clapping", to paraphrase Bateson. It is further doubtless correct that ethnic distinctions can persist despite insignificant differential "distribution of objective [cultural] traits" (Eidheim 1969:39), and that the symbolic articulation of cultural difference can frequently be seen to change in form and content, historically and situationally. Nevertheless, the cultural specificities or differences invoked in every justification of ethnic differentiation or dichotomization may (or may not) have a profound bearing on the experiential nature of ethnic relations themselves. This implies that the medium is not necessarily the message, and that the differences themselves, which represent a level of signification conventionally glossed over by the formalists, should be investigated, and not only the form of their articulation. In other words, if there are contextual imperatives for the production of ethnic signs - and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise, then the contexts in question must be understood along with the acts of inter-ethnic communication.

The cultural differences referred to in ethnic interaction, then, cannot always be reduced to its form without a loss of analytic comprehension. Since culture is such a difficult term to handle analytically, and since one of the main insights from formalist studies of ethnicity is that culture cannot be treated as a fixed and bounded system of signs, it is tempting to reduce or disregard this level of social reality in description and analysis. The most common (tacit) reduction of culture has consisted in showing how ethnic signifiers may change due to changes in context, thereby indicating that the signifiers themselves are really arbitrary, and that the fundamental aspect of ethnicity is the very act of communicating and maintaining cultural difference. This is the position advocated by Leach (1954), who emphatically states:

"Culture provides the form, the 'dress' of the social situation. As far as I am concerned, the cultural situation is a given factor, it is a product and an accident of history. I do not know why Kachin women go hatless with bobbed hair before they are married, but assume a turban afterwards, any more than I know why English women put on a ring on a particular finger to denote the same change in social status; all I am interested in is that in this Kachin context the assumption of a turban by a woman does have this symbolic significance. It is a statement about the status of the woman." (Leach 1954:16)

This type of argument has been very illuminating, but it is unsatisfactory in the end because the cultural context of an act of communicating distinctiveness may, as correctly assumed (and experienced) by non-anthropologists, make a systematic difference in inter-ethnic encounters. At a certain point in the analysis of ethnicity, where recognized cultural differences shape or prevent meaningful interaction, or where power asymmetry distorts discourse, it becomes impossible to neglect substantial features of social, cultural, historical contexts. Although the formal relationship between say, the Canadian state and Mohawk Amerindians may be similar to that between say, the Botswana state and Basarwa (San) people, the social and cultural significance of the respective relationships differ because of important differences in the cultural contexts referred to in the ongoing invocation of differences. This implies that formal modelling of ethnicity may miss the point not only because it leaves out aspects of ethnicity which are important to the agents, but also because it disregards the potentially varying importance of cultural differences in the articulation of ethnicity.

Handelman's (1977) typology of ethnic incorporation, ranking ethnic groups or categories from the socially very loose to the socially very strongly incorporated, has similarly limited explanatory power. It is misleading insofar as it treats ethnic categories or groups as analytical entities. This will not do: it is necessary to account for the production and reproduction of ethnicity in a less abstract, less static way in order to understand its concrete manifestations. Any detailed analysis of ethnicity must therefore take into account the varying cultural significance of ethnicity, not only cross-culturally, but also intra-culturally and perhaps most importantly, intra-personally. Different inter-ethnic contexts within a society, which may or may not involve the same sets of persons, have variable significance in relevant ways. Ethnicity, as a source of cultural meaning and as a principle for social differentiation, is highly distributive within any society or set of social contexts involving the same personnel. Its varying importance, or varying semantic density, can only be appreciated through a comparison of contexts, which takes account of differences in the meaning which are implied by the acts of communicating cultural distinctiveness which we call ethnicity.

A treatment of the relationship between the systemic level of interaction and the systemic level of social formation, necessary in the final analysis when the validity of ethnicity as a comparative concept is to be assessed (cf. Fardon 1987), falls outside of the scope of this article. The ethnographic examples and contexts to be discussed below illustrate the second theoretical point; namely, that the cultural differences which are confirmed in the communication of ethnic differences, vary between contexts which may otherwise be comparable, and that this variation should be understood in accounts of ethnic processes.

Why is ethnicity so important?

Like activities in politics and in the productive sector, family life and certain leisure activities in the two societies are routinely understood and codified in an ethnic idiom. However, the contexts of ethnicity encountered here may differ markedly from those reproduced in fields which are to a greater degree regulated by sets of formal rules. In routine politics, a shared language-game contains rules for competition over shared, scarce values; in the context of wage work, a similar competition is important although, as I have shown, not always sufficiently important to prevent the articulation of incommensurable language-games. It is nevertheless usually in informal contexts of interaction that ethnic differences can be regarded as expressions of incommensurable language-games.

Cultural differences between blacks and Indians are in both societies strongly articulated in matters relating to sexuality. The sexual ideologies of black men in Trinidad and Mauritius encourage promiscuity; to brag publicly of one's numerous achievements in this regard is an affirmation of black identity. In the ideology of Indian-ness, on the contrary, great value is placed on sexual purity in women, and the sacred character of matrimony is emphasized. In an Indian language-game, the supposed sexual prowess of black men is coupled with the widespread notion that women are unable to resist sexual advances. In this way, black men seem to represent a threat against the domestic supremacy of Indian men - and stories about faithless Indian women eloping with black men are so widespread in both societies as to be proverbial. When, in Mauritius, I asked black men about their views on extramarital sex, they might reply, giggling, that "it's not like in Europe" - meaning that it was a daily occurrence. Indo-Mauritians, on the other hand, would usually be reluctant to talk about sex at all. Aids figures from Trinidad, incidentally, tend to confirm the folk assumption that blacks there on an average have a larger number of sexual partners than Indians: there is a striking overrepresentation of blacks in the official figures.

This kind of cultural difference is very important, even if practices do not necessarily conform to folk representations. The distinction suggests that varying representations of self and relevant others indicate, and reproduce, a relevant cultural difference as regards the most intimate of human relationships. Variations in the conceptualization of sexuality are in both societies indexically linked with ethnic labels. It is therefore widely assumed that inter-ethnic interaction in this area can lead to conflicts in the most personal of social fields. Despite generally cordial relations between people of different ethnic identity, intermarriage is rare in both societies.

The important point here is that what anthropologists regard as political ethnicity ("competition over scarce resources") cannot be fully understood unless an understanding of private ethnicity (immediate struggles) is first established. It is in the intimate contexts of family, close friendship and the like that the basic cultural contexts making up individual identity are reproduced. Only if one fully understands the reproduction of discrete, socially discriminating language-games at this level can one hope to understand why ethnicity can be fashioned into such a powerful political force within the unitary language-game of institutional politics. It is in such contexts that the language-games on which all communication of cultural difference feeds, are reproduced. Such contexts are also crucial in the transcendence of ethnic disctinctions; it is significant, thus, that popular national sentiment transcending ethnic boundaries in either society is perhaps never stronger than in contexts of international sports.

The formal systemic frameworks, in this case those of politics and labour, are thus fed with cultural distinctions on which they have a mitigating effect insofar as they represent shared desirable values, but which they neither autonomously create nor reproduce. Both Trinidad and Mauritius have recently (in 1986-7 and 1982-3 respectively) experienced concerted attempts to transcend the ethnic dimension in politics through the formation of broad nationalist coalitions. Following their rapid breakup (in Mauritius, the government lasted nine months, in Trinidad seven), the politicians and the electorate immediately fell back on an ethnic perception of politics, and its subsequent organization was related to such a perception - although not all the new alignments followed strictly ethnic lines. For instance, in Trinidad, the foreign minister BasdeoPanday was removed by the black-dominated government and replaced by another Hindu, SahadeoBasdeo, who was nevertheless considered a less "rootsy" Hindu than the former. Ethnicity in this case proved empirically more fundamental than other principles of classification (in this case, nationalism). Ethnicity is in many contexts the single most important criterion for collective social distinctions in daily life; ethnic distinctions are rooted in perceptions of differences between lifestyles, and the others are held to represent lifestyles and values which are regarded as undesirable. As mentioned, cultural differences are sometimes activated in non-ethnic situations, such as rural/urban, middle-class/ working-class and male/female contexts. However, in these societies, one is never simply "male" or "middle-class": one is Indian male or Coloured middle-class. The ethnic dimension nearly always enters into the definition of a situation; it is an underlying premises for all social classification. To the extent that agents routinely ascribe their own experiences of cultural incompatibility to ethnic differences, ethnicity also remains dominant as a principle for cultural differentiation. This, among other things, entails the maintenance of incommensurable language-games conceptually identified with ethnic differences

Problem questions:

What forms of perception of reality are formed in every culture? Can cross-cultural communication help to create the second linguistic personality? If yes, what can it lead to? Do concepts change within time? In different social spheres? In ethnic and age groups?

Literature of the Victorian Period. Victorian Poetry. Victorian Prose

The 19th century was characterized by sharp contradic­tions. In many ways it was an age of progress: railways and steamships were built, great scientific discoveries were made, education became more widespread; but at the same time it was an age of profound social unrest, because there was too much poverty, too much injustice, too much ugliness; and above all, fierce exploitation of man by man.

The growth of scientific inventions mechanized industry and increased wealth, but this progress only enriched the few at the expense of the many. Dirty factories, inhumanly long hours of work, child labour, exploitation of both men and women workers, low wages, slums and frequent unemploy­ment — these were the conditions of life for the workers in the growing industries of England, which became the richest country in the world towards the middle of the 19th century.

The concern with specific social problems is the most noticeable distinction between Victorian literature and the literature of the preceding centuries. The impulse is gener­ally recognized to have started before Victoria came to the throne, with the First Reform Bill (1832). Fhat act of Parliament recognized the economic dominance of the middle class by finally placing direct political power in its hands. The vote was thus extended to all members of this class/ At this time the old concepts of "Whig" and "Tory" made way for "Liberal" and "Conservative." Liberals were anxious to see operating in full effect the principle which Adam Smith had laid down — the economic "law" of unlimited free Competition"-in trade. They flattered themselves that the world, under their leadership, was becoming more and more attractive, in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act had been passed; in 1833 slavery was abolished; in 1846 free trade became a national policy with the repeal of the Corn Laws; in 1845 Jews were made eligible for public office; and in 1872 the institution of voting by ballot was inaugurated. The Conservatives were as responsible as the Liberals for the passage of these acts; for a long time there was little difference between the two parties. Both were committed to the teaching of Utilitarianism, as promulgated by Bentham, that it was necessary to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Bentham's disciple was James Mill; and Mill's son, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), became the most influential of Victorian Utilitarians. The last-mentioned taught that the only reason that can be adduced for limiting the rights of any Individual in the community "is to prevent harm to others."

This philosophy of unrestricted individualism in economics vastly increased the holdings of the middle class as well as its material comforts. The British Colonial Empire expanded in Asia and Africa by conquest and colonization. There were many who could exclaim with the Mr. Boebuck whom Matthew Arnold made immortal by attacking, "I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last."

But there was a less attractive side to the picture which industrialists chose to overlook. The philosophy of non­interference by the government meant unrestricted hardship to the legions of workers who were dependent for their very existence upon their employers. Labor was cheap, the birth rate high, and slum conditions became increasingly worse. The earliest attempt of workingmen to combine for better living conditions met with ferocious opposition in Parlia­ment. A law of 1825 fixed punishment at hard labor as he penalty for attempting any act inconsistent with the freedom of employers to make contracts. The Victorian Age, from a working-class point of view, is- the record of a long struggle of wage-earners to win recognition from the government. A People's Charter was drawn up in 1838, and began the so called Chartist movement, which demanded universal man­hood suffrage, the secret ballot, and abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament. Universal manhood suffrage was perhaps inevitably the foundation of any further progress. Actually it was not until 1917 that the point was won in the Manhood Suffrage Bill. Before that act was passed, the decades were punctuated by a series of strikes and riots in urban centers. Though the Chartist movement was for a long time unsuccessful, it served the function of making the general public aware of the problems involved. By unceasing protest small gains were realized. In 1847 a ten-hour working day was established. In 1842 women and children were forbidden employment in the mines. In 1867 and 1873 women and children were excluded from heavier agricultural work. By 1875 a series of public health acts had become law.

Meanwhile, Liberal and Conservative alike had no intention of impeding the solid profits of British Industry. As long ago as 1798, Malthus (in his answer to Godwin) had given them the theory which justified governmental indifference. Malthus's Essay on Population had insisted that poverty, disease and war are necessary to prevent the greater catastrophe of overpopulation; to coddle the people, it warned, was to upset natural law. Among the many idealists who arose to dispute this official view were some who dreamed of a return to manufacture by hand—an idea that appealed powerfully to certain important authors. One of the few-who looked to the future instead of the past was Robert Owen (1771-1858), who originated the idea of cooperatives.

The Victorian period was a complex time. The people of Great Britain experienced great changes in every area of life.

Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 at the age of eight­een. A series of reform laws had been passed recently: the Bill Re form of 1832; the abolition of slavery and the first effective law for the protection of children in factories in 1833, the Poor Law of 1834. Throughout the nineteenth century the Victorians continued to make progress in social reforms. The workers were becoming an effective force in improving living and working conditions. Though huge in­justices existed, the Victorians made efforts to improve their society. The Chartists, an organization of working class people drew up a "People's Charter", a legislative programme submitted to Parliament in 1837 by London Working Men's Association, calling for the exten­sion of the rights to vote for all male citizens 21 years of age and over, elections by secret ballot, annual parliamentary elections, and other legislative reforms. Despite ten years of agitation and much popular support, the Chartists failed to have their programme passed by Parliament. The Chartists and their movement died out in the 1850's. Nevertheless, most of their demands, except the demand for anniial parliamentary elections, eventually became law.

This historical period is reflected in literature that got the name Chartist Literature which falls on the first half of the nineteenth century when working class movement spread in the country. The events changed swiftly so only little genres such as poems, pam­phlets, satire, and criticism could follow them closely. The poetry and pamphlets of the period are marked by revolutionary spirit. Different periodicals of the time had the so called Poet's corner where such poetry was published. They also appreciated the poetry of Byron and Shelley for its revolutionary pathos.

Among the most revolutionary-minded representatives of the Chartist literature are George Harney, William Linton, Ernest Jones, and Gerald Massey.

George Harney's poem All Men Are Brethren expresses the idea of a future happy and friendly society for which the working people should fight. It reminds us of Robert Burns' The Tree of Liberty and Is There for Honest Poverty.

As bright as the sky when the tempest is ended;

As fair as the earth when the winter is o'er - Shall glory and freedom for ever be blended,

When the dark freezing reign oppression's no more, The happy communion, Of nations in union, The serpent of selfishness never shall mar. Then sing, brothers, sing, Let the chorus loud ring, "All Men are Brethren! hip! hip! Hurrah!"

No less revolutionary is his address "The Friend of the People to the Enslaved, Oppressed, and Suffering Classes of Great Britain and Ireland" in which he called upon the people to start their fight. "In the two or three remaining weeks you have remaining, let me exhort you to ARM. I mean you that are yet unarmed; for oh, thank God, tens of thousands of you can now, hand to hand and foot to foot, assert your right to be free men. To you that are not so pre­pared I say again, ARM to protect your aged parents, ARM for your wives and children, ARM for your Sweethearts and sisters, ARM to drive tyranny from the soil and oppression from the judgement- seat. Your country, your posterity, your God demands of you to ARM! ARM! ARM!!!"

William Linton in his poem The Dirge of the Nations voices the role of a poet in the time after the suppression of the Chartist movement. The Poet is chained to the rock over the precipice as Prometheus had been and from there he observes the situation in European countries. So the poet's duty is to rally the people, to summon them for a new fight. This spirit of unity and fight is also expressed in Ernest Jones poem The March of Freedom:

The nations are all calling To and fro, from strand to strand;

Uniting in one army The slaves of every land.

The Victorian era was a time of industrial and scientific progress. Great innovations were introduced: electrical engineering, develop­ment of machine tools, creation of vaccines, locomotives, steam­ships, telegraphs, bathtubs, gas cooking ranges. Science and tech­nology had a profound effect on Victorian thought as well. Most disturbing was the work of Charles Darwin Origin of Species, from which the majority of people found the notion that human beings "descended from a monkey".

British literature of the Victorian Age cannot be characterized by a single distinct style or emphasis on a particular subject. Many writers protested hypocrisy, some clung to fading romantic ideals of the past; others wrote realistic interpretations of life.

The novel was an especially popular form of literature. Certain­ly one of the most popular storytellers of all time is Charles Dick­ens, whose novels are both entertaining and critical of sham and hypocrisy in Victorian society. In Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839), for example, he exposes the shameful treatment of orphans; in Great Expectations (1861) he attacks the materialistic values of mid-Victorian society. Another early Victorian novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray shared Dickens's gift for revealing character and human conflict. Vanity Fair (1848) is Thackeray's best known novel, although The History of Henry Esmond, Esq (1852) is thought by many to be his most perfectly integrated work. The tradition of social criticism established by these novelists is evident throughout the period, culminating in The Way of All Flesh (1903) by Samuel Butler (1835-1902), a venomous attack on repres­sive family life, hypocritical religious practice, and inadequate ed­ucation. A number of women novelists began to make a name for themselves. Among these were the Bronte sisters. Emily Bronte's novel was the masterpiece Wuthering Heights (1847). Ann Bronte wrote the novel Agnes Grey in the same year. Charlotte Bronte was more prolific as a writer and also became involved in the external world. Her best novel Jane Eyre (1847) is an imaginative and com­pelling tale of human passion. Mary Ann Evans, after assuming the pen name George Eliot, gained fame and was recognized as the first English novelist to incorporate the intellectual ideas of the time into her novels. Her knowledge of the contemporary life and her sense of moral virtues are most highly developed in Middlemarch (1871-72) and The Mill on the Floss (1860).

The writers of the first half of the nineteenth century pictured their contemporary society, the class division, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, social injustice with down-to-ground realism. The contribution is great. Karl Marx called Charles Dickens, Wil­liam Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters "the glorious school" of English novelists whose descriptions re­vealed to the world more political and social truths than did all the politicians, publicists and moralists added together.

Toward the end of the century a number of novelists seemed to be more interested in human psychology than in social issues. Two of them, George Meredith (1828-1909) and Thomas Hardy, wrote lengthy novels that probed the depth of human nature and behav­iour. Meredith wrote comic romances about male weakness and fe­male strength, such as The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871), The Egoist (1879), The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), while Hardy wrote realistic tales set in his native Wessex. Hardy expressed a dark pessimism in powerful works such as The Return of the Native (1878), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

There were other writers whose novels illustrate the increasing interest in the world at large and who are representatives of Neo- Romanticism. Among these storytellers were Robert Luis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Joseph Conrad. Steven­son is best known for adventure tales often set in the exotic South Seas where he spent part of his life. Kipling, in writing about life in India, seemed to champion the cause of British imperialism, while Conrad denounced England's attempt to justify its supremacy as an imperial power. Joseph Conrad's early sea stories were written in the nineteenth century, though his best works belong to the twentieth century. Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes character in his detective stories. The fascinating writer of this period was also the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a minister and a mathema­tician at Oxford who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll. His major works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1872) are complex and sophisticated children's books, rich in parody, irony, and sym­bolic suggestion. Besides Alice in Wonderland, Dodgson as Carroll wrote humorous verse, including The Hunting of the Shark: an Ago­ny in Eight Fits (1876), In Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and its sequel Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), he tried with mixed success to incorporate Christian philosophy into a story for children; his comic verse is delightful, as always, but the total effect is marred by lapses into sentiment not found in Alice in Wonderland.

Victorian poetry is represented by Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Their poetry is diverse in style and subject, sometimes optimistic to please the pub­lic and the Queen, sometimes romantic and melancholy when they express their own thoughts and feelings. Notable in the poetry of the late nineteenth century was a willingness to explore new modes of expression and a mood of pessimism, a sense of tragedy, disap­pointment and waste The Victorians produced little notable writing for the stage. The plays of Oscar Wilde were not sharply satiric. His The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) projects upper-class English society as to­tally devoid of emotional, moral, and physical reality. George Ber­nard Shaw, who dominated British drama for much of the twentieth century, wrote his first plays Widower's Houses (1892), The Philan­derer (1893), and Mrs.Warren's Profession (1894) in the Victorian Period, and his fame began to mount during the last five years of the nineteenth century.

Creative writing was deeply influenced by the general spirit of the age, which saw the triumph of evolutionism in science, poverty, colonial wars, fight for economic and political dominance, unem­ployment, and the rise of the working class. Some writers offered escape from the unattractiveness of everyday life into a romantic adventure world. There appeared decadent trends called escapism and aestheticism which advocated the theory of "art for art's sake", and also naturalism and symbolism. Naturalists portrayed insignif­icant, nontypical facts as if they were of great importance, explain­ing the laws governing society as natural laws. Symbolists attached symbolic meaning to particular words and sounds. All these trends and theories greatly influenced the further development of English literature.

Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1808