1. significant Novelists:
The Victorian Age
It is the phase of the Reign of Queen Victoria (1837 – 1901), in which the novel becomes the leading form of literature in England.
significant Novelists:
Charles Dickens
William Thackeray
Anna, Charlotte and Emily Brontë
George Eliot

2. MEAN FEATURES OF VICTORIAN LITERATURE
omniscient third person narrator
most of the times the protagonist speaks with the same voice of the author
narrator is always visible both in third person and in first person narrations
complicate and long story line
linear time
narrative structure
Educational purpose

3. THE MODERN AGE
Modernism is an aesthetics movements that goes from 1890 to 1930.
It may be considered a rejection against the Victorian Age because there is a radical transformation in the way in which people see the World, so there is a different concept of life.
IMPORTANT WRITERS OF MODERN AGE:
James Joyce
T. S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
Virginia Woolf
Ford Madox Ford
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Henry Roth
Wyndham Lewis
Laura Riding
Hilda Doolittle
Gertrude Stein

4. The reader is free to make his personal idea
MODERNISM
Cultural movement during the first three decades of the 20th century
Rejected the old Victorian standards
In LITERATURE
How say things (form)
Minimum plot
The eclipse of the narrator
The shift of the point of view
The stream of consciousness technique
Focus on the psychology
Simultaneous concept of time
Poetical language
The reader is free to make his personal idea

5. Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”
It is a suitable example of Modern fiction, in which V.Woolf adopts some interesting narrative techniques:
The Interior Monologue, in which the reader has got the feeling to be inside character’s mind. He can know everything about character’s present, past and future.
Moment of Being is a moment when an individual is totally conscious of his experience. In her moments of being Woolf uses a language that comes near poetry.
In the novel there is a simultaneous concept of time, however exist a relation between the time of narration and the chronological time.

6. One of the most important Modernist writers
JAMES JOYCE ( )
One of the most important Modernist writers
Ulysses (1922)
Dublin, 16 June 1904 (a single day)
Three characters (Leopold and Molly Bloom, Stephen)
18 chapters have titles derived from the episodes in the Odyssey by Homer
Leopold = Ulysses
Molly = Penelope
Details of everyday life and the inner life of the characters
Formal aspect is very important
First person narrator
Stream of consciousness technique
No logical connectors
No punctuation
Anaphoric construction
Simultaneous time
Demands a lot to the reader
Joyce is extremely realistic