ENGL200B Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Victorian Literature

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL200B
• Professor: Ally Fainblum

Document Summary

Thomas hardy far from the madding crowd. Chapter 21: the great barn and the sheep-shearers: the pastoral: literary convention. The barn is the one giant pause of the narrative; stops the story to explain what the barn is. The barn is giving us a specific kind of treatment of the pastoral. Combines three things: historical continuity: functional continuity with 400 years of history, harmony: a given, with the natural world. In victorian literature, some critics ha(cid:448)e said that it"s so(cid:272)ial har(cid:373)o(cid:374)(cid:455) (cid:894)people getti(cid:374)g alo(cid:374)g(cid:895). They all know their function though: vitalit(cid:455): the pastoral is i(cid:374) use; (cid:374)ot just a ta(cid:271)leau(cid:454). It"s (cid:374)ot just a prett(cid:455) picture, it gets stuff done by people. The people change, but they stay the same in terms of their function in the place: a property of victorian fictions (set in the country). Just describes the farm; stops the sequence of events to explain things (about the setting and goes on for quite some time).