English 3044 England to 1900

England 500-2015 Feudal economy (500-1500) Land is valuable. Population is rural. Society is organized around kings, lords/knights, and peasants, by ties of loyalty Capitalist/Industrial economy (1500-1968) Production and goods are valuable. Population is urban. Society is organized around owners and workers, by ties of economic benefit Knowledge economy (1968-) Information is valuable. Population is online. Society is organized around multiple and temporary arrangements of sharing and controlling information

Key Developments 1. The economic development of financial capitalism. The labor shortages of the 1300’s along with the expansion of trade brought new wealth and power into cities. The growth of banking, stocks, and corporations became an important factor as new technologies in metallurgy, coal, oil, and electricity led to industrial capitalism and the factory system. All this caused a decline in the importance of land and agriculture, and spelled the death of the old feudal system based on personal ties of loyalty. Royal courts fell in prestige when the money was elsewhere.

Key Developments 2. The growth of international trade and colonization. Improved sea technology and better ships and navigation equipment allowed a huge expansion in markets and colonies as the European countries raced to claim foreign lands in North and South America and Africa and Asia. At times missionaries conflicted with speculators and investors, or new diseases decimated native populations, as these new lands became uneasily tied into the growing global system of capitalism and trade.

Key Developments 3. The expansion of industrialized war. Medieval wars were short and small-scale, because war was incredibly expensive. New technologies drove the mechanization of permanent armies and new, deadly weaponry such as cannons, rifles, warships, and machine guns. This made war bloodier and easier to wage, especially as castles and armor became useless and civilian populations became targets in war.

Key Developments 4. The growth of nationalism, often in competition to older religious or folk traditions of identity. The growth of fixed countries based on language or land boundaries, as opposed to identity based on ethnic markings, solidified Europe as the Holy Roman Empire fragmented. This made early modern war particularly violent. On the plus side, nationalism often supported the progression toward democracy and voting rights.

Key Developments 5. The growth of humanism and science. Originally the new renaissance philosophies from the lost Roman Empire and Greece were not hostile to Christianity and many thinkers were also religious men. Over time the concept of truth as being revealed or reasoned out was in competition with the idea of empirical truth, information derived from direct observation or experimentation—the growth of modern science.

Key Developments 6. Religious war. As modern Europe divided into countries, tensions with the central Roman Catholic Church grew, worsened by the corruption which had increased in a wealthy and powerful central church authority. Both for theological and political reasons, England and Germany broke from the church and became Protestant, and Protestantism in turn splintered into sub-groups. Combined with the growth in nationalism and military technology, this caused long wars between Protestant and Catholic nations. Fatigue from the religious wars was one element in the anti-religiosity of the secular French Revolution and the birth of socialism and Marxism.

England after Shakespeare English civil war (1642-51) between parliament and Charles I Charles I executed for treason in 1648 The “Protectorate” rule by Puritan Oliver Cromwell Cromwell dies 1658; protectorate fails and Charles II invited to throne 1660 (Restoration) Brief war again in 1688; James II deposed; William III invited from Netherlands

The novel in England Novels existed in some form in ancient Rome, Arabia, China, and India, and in early modern Europe, but did not spread to England until the 1600s with the growth of printing. The first modern novel in English is considered Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Novels rejected older aristocratic poetic forms; they were popular with a mass audience and were cheap and easy to read. As they were usually read privately, they tend to deal with the growth and development of personal experience.

The English Enlightenment The 1700’s in England is a time of urban prosperity and expansion in the British empire. As the power of the royal court shrinks, science and technology become more prominent. Although the novel form expands, it is not a particularly productive period for literature. Satire and more cynical styles are popular after the religious wars of the 17th century.

19th Century Ideas Political Economy was a methodology developed by early economists such as Adam Smith and Malthus which attempted to analyze, through mathematics and empirical evidence, relationships between production, consumption, and wealth creation. A predominant concept in this view was laissez-faires (leave it alone!)—that economies mostly worked best without interference from governments as it was in the natural interests of an industry to regulate itself for maximal profit and benefit.   Romanticism was a movement in Europe around 1800 in opposition to what was seen as the growing cynicism and rationalism of the 1700’s after the religious wars and the seeming dehumanization of humans in the age of factory production. Romanticism, in poet William Wordsworth’s words, involved “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and prioritized feelings, passion, and nature in art, literature, and music.

The Victorian Era Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was a popular queen and ruled at perhaps the height of the British Empire. The 19th century was a time of territorial expansion and political and cultural dominance for England.

Victorian England 1837-1901 …Unless you were poor. As public farm lands were closed off and people came to cities to find industrial jobs, living standards for the poor involved dangerous and insecure work at low wages, dirt, and poverty. This also caused early labor and socialist movements.

Victorian Values: Respectability! (Or else.)

Or not… The Victorian era has a stereotype of being prudish and sexually repressed, so much so that “Victorian” is now used as an adjective for this meaning. In fact, religious ideals of family respectability coexisted with confident, adult themes in art, photography, and literature.

Poetic Themes Religious doubt and shock after Darwinian theory (Tennyson, Arnold) Sensual, idealized imagery; religious and classical symbolism (Rosetti, Browning, Hopkins) Poetry inspired by the ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ style of painting, which emphasized symbolic and idealized feeling over realism Freer and looser poetic meter and lineation

Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-Raphaelites

Victorian Timeline 1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. 1867: Marx’s Das Kapitol is published. 1869: First Transcontinental Railroad completed in United States. 1879: Thomas Edison tests his first light bulb. 1890s: Sigmund Freud first active in psychoanalysis. 1893: New Zealand becomes the first country to enact women's suffrage. 1903: First controlled heavier-than-air flight of the Wright Brothers. 1908: First commercial radio transmissions. The Ford Motor Company invents the Model T.

Fin de Siècle: “End of the age” At the end of the 19th century, Queen Victoria was getting old, and writers and painters tired of Victorian conventions of respectability. A time of fatigue with English society and the decadence of empire Increasingly shocking depictions of love and sexuality Cynicism mixed with optimism for the new century

Fin de Siècle: “End of the age” Strongly influenced by French culture, late Victorian intellectual activity was often marked by “stylish” cynicism and by disenchantment with the failure of democracy to spread wealth and benefits evenly from rich to poor. Growing popularity of socialist movements An intellectual movement of existentialism and depression

Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Algernon: I hope tomorrow will be a fine day, Lane. Lane: It never is, sir. Algernon: Lane, you're a perfect pessimist. Lane: I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.

Storm Clouds 1. The decline in belief of man as divinely special. Darwin wasn’t an atheist until late in life, and he believed that evolutionary theory wasn’t in conflict with Christianity—many European churches believed that the Genesis story of creation wasn’t meant literally anyway. But as evolutionary theory and the scientific process became more hostile to traditional concepts of man as created by God and, the idea of man as having a higher moral spirit is challenged.

Storm Clouds 2. The decline of belief in man as rational. Freud’s studies begin to suggest that people’s mental states are unreliable and subject to neuroses. Henri Bergson writes on the perception of time as unstable and subjective. John Watson studies behaviorism, suggesting that people can be conditioned into different behaviors. Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (1928) argues that matter itself is unpredictable.

England at 1900 Summary Building political tension between European nation states Intellectual challenges: Maybe people are not blessed, or rational Proto-socialist and Marxist movements, labor disputes New technologies in sanitation, electrification, travel, and communication