The Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope
ENGLISH VICTORIAN LITERATURE
1.SHORT ANALYSIS ABOUT THE BOOK BARCHESTER TOWERS BY
ANTHONY THROLLOPE
2. CRITIC TO THE VICTORIAN SOCIATY AND ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT
TOPICS IN THE BOOK
1.INTRODUCTION TO VICTORIAN LITERATURE
The Queen Victoria I of England acceded to the throne in 1837 and remained
until 1901 (a record only surpassed by the current Elizabeth II). In these
decades, England became the first world power and her Empire reached the
zenith of her power. The Industrial Revolution, which had begun a few years
ago but was consolidated then, transformed the economic and social fabric of
the country and the cultural, political and even scientific changes that occurred
during this period have rarely had an equivalent in the history of The humanity.
In this context of changes and innovations, new forms of thought, hobbies and
artistic trends emerged that tried to make sense of a world in constant
transformation. Socialism, anarchism, naturalism, decadence ... were some of
the doctrines that sought to explain the essence of the society of the time.
There are many ways to approach history. Only the facts can be studied,
preference can be given to socioeconomic structures, to the marginal classes or
to the mentality of society. Among the multiple historiographic approaches, one
of the most interesting corresponds to the study of the literature of the time.
Writers have the privilege of freedom, that is, they are not subject to the
postulates of a discipline: they can invent, they can lie and say whatever they
want. However, their stories are usually the expression of the feeling of what
surrounds them. A poet is the son of his time and behind his verses life appears
as it is conceived by society. Hence, analyzing a time (in this case, the
Victorian) from the perspective of the most recognized literary writings can bring
us closer to it as reliably as any other wise historical research work would.
Who better to take this journey through the second half of the 19th century than
one of the great figures of Anglo-Saxon literature: G.K. Chesterton. With his
characteristic irony and his scathing prose, the English writer reviews in The
Victorian Age in Literature * the best-known writers of that period. As
Chesterton himself wittily points out, “Much of the best literature can be
convincingly cataloged in two different ways. On the one hand, there is the one
that seems to be cutting a raisin cake or a Gruyere cheese: as the knife goes
deeper inside, it runs into fruits or holes. On the other hand, we have the
, literature that seems to be cutting a log in the sense of the grain of the wood - if,
using the metaphor, we consider that there is a grain. In any case, both can
never occur at the same time. Throughout time, the names never appear in the
order in which they are presented to us in systematic studies of a literary trend.
Criticism that seeks to systematize the spirit of an age must, necessarily,
always move back and forth in time, in the way that a branch tirelessly swings in
one direction and its fruit, at the same time, does so irregularly. and free in the
other, as if it were the course of an untamed river ”.
Chesterton's book, published in 1913 —although the English writer had a very
open mind for his time, sometimes you have to keep in mind when the work was
published— includes a large cast of authors, of which the non-specialized
Spanish reader You will probably know a few (Dickens, the Brönte sisters,
Stevenson or Kipling), have heard something from others (Coleridge,
Swinburne or Macaulay) and will almost certainly not know most of them
(Tennyson, Ruskin, Newman, Kingsley, Browning, for cite just a few).
Chesterton's treatment and criticism of his works is very personal, giving free
rein to his opinions and preferences throughout the story. We are not, therefore,
before a classic manual on the history of literature, but rather before the
reflection that a great writer makes about his predecessors, to whom he feels
he is in debt.
As Chesterton pointed out in the quote transcribed above, the work does not
follow a chronological script. The temporary jumps occur continuously and the
only structure that we can find is thematic. The scarce one hundred and sixty
pages that make up the book are grouped into four chapters, of which the first is
dedicated to the precursors of Victorian literature (the "eccentrics") and other
figures who, consciously and unconsciously, opposed this literary style. (The
Oxford Movement, Dickens, and a motley group of writers who tried to create a
new Protestant romanticism, including Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, and Maurice).
The presence of Dickens in this chapter and not in the next one, dedicated to
novelists, is justified because “the two most relevant events of this revolution
called Dickens were, on the one hand, that it attacked the cold Victorian
compromise and, on the other, who did it without being aware of it.
2.SUMMARY OF THE BOOK
The Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in the
Barsetshire Chronicles series by Anthony Trollope (1815-1882). Among other
things, it satirizes the furious antipathy that then existed within the Church of
England between the High Church and the supporters of the Evangelicals.
Trollope started writing his book in 1855. He wrote it non-stop and even had a
portable desk built to keep doing it when he was traveling by train. "When a
man begins to write a book he never stops," he wrote in a letter during this time.
"The evil that haunts you is as inveterate as drinking and as exciting as
playing." Years later, he observed in his autobiography that "writing The Towers
of Barchester was a great delight. The Bishop and Mrs. Proudie were very real
to me, as were the Archdeacon's troubles and Mr. Slope's loves." But when he
presented the finished work to his publisher, William Longman, he initially
rejected it, finding it full of "vulgarity and exaggeration." Today, the novel is a
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