Victorian Studies by George Levine

     Victorian Age itself reminds us of the ruling period of Queen Victoria; and in literature, it was the period of novels and fictions. Politically, it was the period when England was rapidly acquiring and holding colonies; there was progress, optimism and economic boom; and so England was the most powerful country in the 18 th century. Victorian period was the period of colonization with the rise of commercialism and materialism. At the same time this period was also of the industrialization that referred to the brutal exploitation of labor class people by the elites. Therefore almost all the literary works that developed during this age was more a reaction against industrialization; which emerged most effectively from the left or Marxist point of view. For example Victorian writers like Charles Dickens were strongly against ills and evils of industrialization. But today here George Levine redraws the boundary of Victorian studies with the help of many modern approaches like Feminism, New Historicism, Cultural Studies etc.

READING FROM TEXTUAL ASPECT
     Victorian period has been studied not from a single parameter. Scholars are interpreting Victorian literature from formalistic ground too. Traditional and humanist critic of Victorian literature was influenced by the idea of Arnold and New Critic like F.R Leavis and Henry James believes in organist. They regard Victorian literature formally least satisfying, formally defective and a kind of mistake. For them Victorian novels are loose baggy monsters, not well organized, not coherent and integrate, not well woven and tightly connected. For them Victorian novels found to be melodramatic. In this regard humanist and new critic blames Victorian literature which has not such characteristics of reflecting social reality. Thus Victorian literature is excluded from the cannon of English literature by humanist.Some other critics try to find Victorian literature realistic. Romantic writers try to go away from reality. The setting in romantic literature is like the garden of kublakha or garden in the middle of sea. But Victorian literature tries to take very realistic world. The characters are ordinary as we meet in Victorian literature. Place is also very common. Victorian literature is in a great extent realistic but not symbolist and romantic. So Northon Frye called Victorian novel “low mimetic form merely imitates simplicity”.

READING FROM CONTEXTUAL/ HISTORICAL/ IDEOLOGICAL ASPECT
     Victorian literature got a new height when it is studied from ideological, historical, cultural and sociological perspectives. The ideological critic was not satisfied by language, structure or form only; they opened the dimension beyond textual parameters so they are contextual critics. Therefore the study of Victorian period has been studied from both parameters; on the basis of both political and formalist. Later these tendencies are combined together to form New Historicism where they talked about historicity of text and textuality of history. Events don’t remain forever but what remains is the narration or representation of the event in the text. So history is textual. Also, as a history is written by an individual there has to be unique individual element of the writer in the history. Therefore, history is like literature -it is partly fictional and it is the construct of power- it is textual. Whatever the writer writes is not the product of his pure mind alone, it is equally influenced by events and times as well.

READING FROM INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
     The serious study of Victorian literature begins by Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, Mary Poovey, and Terry Eagleton. Before 60s Victorian literature was not considered to be good. It was ignored and rejected. Only after 60s serious study of Victorian literature began and it was given continuous by Fredric Jameson Edward Said, Bakhtin etc. New method of approaching Victorian studies; interdisciplinary approach came on 1957 with the publication of Raymond William’s Cultural and Society. Due to this book Raymond Williams became very influential Marxist critic. He defined culture in such a way that his definition opposed the definition of Matthew Arnold taken up by New Critics. For Arnold the idea of culture is very exclusive and it refers to only few intellectuals, who are governed by materialistic values. But for Raymond Williams culture is an overall way of life of the people. It is inclusive not exclusive like that of Arnold. Raymond’s idea of culture is anthropological and refers to all human culture. So Mathew Arnold makes a demarcation between the high culture and the low culture. But to Raymond Williams there is nothing like high or low culture. If we came to critic Richard Hoggart; he is a critic of working class or popular class. Arnold considers culture of working class is not authentic and unnatural. But for Hoggart culture of working class people is more authentic than other because it can capture the essence of human position and emotion. This is how Hoggart subverts canonical text and so called non canonical text.Thus Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart contributed to subvert the notion of high art and low art. So they have great contribution to cultural studies. They are the precursors of New Historicism. Another thing in interdisciplinary is that New Historicism did not imagine the denial of generic boundaries of various disciplines. Before New Historicist, science, history, were supposed to be distinctively different genres, but the boundaries between these genres were blurred by New Historicism by saying literature can be fictional, historical, science can be fictional, fiction can be scientific etc. Victorian literature was the literature of high and elite class. The age was marked as the age of material prosperity. The age was novel dominated age and the novels were the chief source of entertainment for high class people. Economy was under the control of a certain group so there was the domination on society. Working class people used to be valued as nothing, just as machine or commodity. Thus the dehumanization and co modification of man was another of the period. The recent critics have been shifting their focus on such unhealthy domination and on working class ideology. E.P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class was very much influential in shifting attention of literary scholars from the most obvious canonical work to the activities of writers concerned with working class.In this way, these interdisciplinary and Historical critics remapped the boundary of Victorian literature by in corporating ignored and marginalized writers from the lower class. Similarly they also challenged a historical notion of literary text. Read More...