Victorian Critical Theory - René Wellek (essay date 1965)
René Wellek (essay date 1965)
SOURCE: Wellek, René. “English Criticism.” In A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, Volume 3: The Age of Transition, pp. 86-92. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965.
[In the following excerpt, Wellek describes the 1830s and 1840s as transitional decades between earlier Romantic theories and those of the Victorian age.]
INTRODUCTORY
In England the thirties and forties of the 19th century can be described as an age of transition. This, it has been objected, is true of any period; but these two decades fit particularly well John Stuart Mill's description in his Spirit of the Age (1831): “Men have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.” There was an anarchy of opinions and an aversion to system and theory. “He is a theorist: and the word which expresses the highest and noblest effort of human intelligence is turned into a...
[The entire page is 3764 words long]
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