1.
Comparison
of
Romantic
age and
Victorian
age.

2.
Name :- Himanshi parmar
Semester :- 1
Roll number :- 12
Email id - himanshiparmar3004@gmail.com
Enrollment number :- 4069206420210025
Paper number - 5
History of English Literature..
2
Date : 10 December 2021
Friday
Time : 10:30

3.
Romantic age
✘ First half of the Nineteenth century, generally recorded
as a Romantic period in literature.
✘ Normally Romantic age or Romanticism taken place
from the 1770s to the 1830s.
✘ It is characterised by emotional language and praise of
nature.
✘ During this time common people start reading Bible.
✘ William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Robert
Southey, Byron, Shelley are concider as a romantic
poets.
3

4.
Victorian Age
× Came in existence during the region of queen Victoria. (1837-
1901).
× Rather than praising nature, they talks about social concerns
such as poverty.
× But similarity between both the age is, both the age are reaction
to cultural changes.
× When queen Victoria came on Throne, in 1837, we found sun of
English Literature fainted of after Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Scott.
× William J. Long in his book mentioned one quote of Wordsworth,
written in 1835, which talks about emptiness in literature in the
beginning of Victorian period.
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5.
“Like clouds that rake, the mountain summits or Waves that own no
curbing hand, how fast has brother followed brother, from sunshine to
sunless land”.
× But later on, the group of prose writers included Dickens,
Thackeray, Carlyle, and Ruskin had begun to raise in the literary glory
of a new age.

6.
Comparison between Romantic age and Victorian Age
:-
1 ) Use of Language :-
× Romantic Literature is emotionally expressive. It
often uses phrases such as, “oh..!”, “Alas!” To give
the impression of sudden onrush of feelings.
× But the Victorian poets or writers are not using
such language because they want to show the
world as it really was. So they use modern
expressions and language. And make less use of
flowery metaphors and images.
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7.
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8.
Idealism vs Realism :-
Prachi kumari in her article mentioned that,
Romanticism is deep belief in the power of nature, the
writer like keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge are
mostly write about the nature and imagination, instead
of looking About reality. They only try to describes good,
positive side of world and beauty of nature.
Victorian writer mostly write About the problems of
world. Hardy, Tennyson and Browning described the
world full of darkness, and distributed. Also Charles
Dickens novel. Showed misery of the working poor.
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9.
Romanticism was in the part a reaction against the
Industrialism revolution. When urbanization and factory
production swept across the whole Europe, during the 18th
century, writer started looking for the nature, just to escape
from threatened industrial life.
Similarly, inequality in economic through 19th century led
Victorian writers to write for horror of poverty, and they started
portraying dark side of poverty and economic inequality.
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Historical background :-

10.
Romantic writers are known for emotional outbursts, as William
Wordsworth called it,
“The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”.
Romantic poetry is majorly known for its sudden expressions of joy,
sadness, and excitement.
Victorian literature, take literature as deliberately craft and they used
carefull structure and language. It's we see in Browning's poem, ‘My last
Duchess’. The poem uses irony. So that, it will became hard to
understand for their long and complicated plot. Such like jude the
Obscure by Hardy. ‘An Apology for poetry’ by Sir Philip Sidney.
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Emotions Vs Reality :-

11.
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12.
Poetry and prose :-
We found Romantic age reflected the glory of poetry. We found it in
the poetry of Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats,
Moore and Southey.
Southey and Coleridge also wrote prose, more than poetry. Mainly
they write prose for money. William J. Long write in his book that
Southey States that,
“What would otherwise have been better written in prose”.
Victorian era mainly known as age of prose. With the spread of
popular education, number of readers has increased.
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13.
Thank you.

14.
Citations
14
William , Long. “Free Ebooks | Project
Gutenberg.” English Literature , Handy
Kevin,Maddock Dave, 6 Jan. 2004,
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10609
Prachi, Kumari. “Www.quora.com.” What Is the Difference between
Romantic and Victorian Literature?, D'Angelo Adam, Dec. 2016,
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-
Romantic-and-Victorian-literature/answer/Prachi-Kumari-22.