Key Features Of Victorian Literature

Question 1

Realism

Answer 1

rather than romantics, much more realistic approach to describing nature, a source of leisure and sometimes inspiration

Question 2

Pessimism

Answer 2

Realistic, descriptions of pain, suffering and struggles of time came across as pessimistic

Question 3

Questioning god science vs religion

Answer 3

Secularism increasing in society with publications like Darwins origins of the species, writers turned to a focus on man, moved away from romantic focus on nature to examine city life

Question 4

Sentimentality

Answer 4

Poems often deal with intense emotions, passions or nostalgia

Question 5

Social responsibility

Answer 5

writers began to understand need for social change and inequalities that existed in society

Question 6

literary devices

Answer 6

vivid images and personification, anaphora and embedded religious imagery, myths and legends, medieval literature

Question 7

Guerard on defeats

Answer 7

The sense of life as a a succession of small undramatic defeats; the honest declaration of unfaith and unhope

Question 8

Guerard on irony

Answer 8

The ironic awareness of ordinary human incompatiblies, of misplaced hopes and absurdly mismatched destinies