Criticism after Romanticism: 1. Moral Criticism

Abstract

An overview of some central ideas and movements in English criticism and aesthetics during the Victorian period, after the heyday of Romanticism. This lecture centers on the moralistic and aesthetic theories of Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, John Stuart Mill and the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, with a main emphasis on poetics and symbolism.

Keywords: Criticism, Victorian literature, History of ideas, Moral criticism, Aesthetics