PROSE

Non-fiction

Features of Romantic Non-fiction

• The essay, especially the personal essay, was the dominant form

• Essays often explored the psychological state of the author

• Longer polemical works were also common

• Notions of freedom and justice inspired by the French Revolution informed many of the works

• Diaries, memoirs and travelogues were also important genres

• Much of the literary criticism of the period appeared in the form of review essays and in letters.

The Romantic essay was influenced by the writings and style of Rousseau and Montesquieu. The essays of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt and others were very personal in style and autobiographical in nature. Since many of these writers were interested in the psychology and personality of human beings, the essays were often explorations of their own mental states and emotional conditions. Thus, a subjective tone informs many of these essays and non-fictional prose, even when the author is writing a so-called ‘objective’ critical essay.

An important context for the essay form during the Romantic period was the launch of numerous literary periodicals and magazines. Periodicals like Gentleman's Magazine introduced the writings of many newcomers, who then went on to become famous: Walter Scott, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb and William Beckford, to name a few. The periodicals also played an important role in the dissemination of political and literary culture across England.

The Victorian age in literature is roughly taken to be between 1830 and 1890, approximately coinciding with the long reign of Queen Victoria.

This was the age of industrialization, empire and reform. Mass movement of people from the country to London changed its demographics drastically. Poverty and exploitation increased. Family life was significantly altered. Slums sprang up in and around London and pollution made its appearance. The Chartist uprisings (see the box Chartism) and increasing social unrest raised fears of a revolution similar to the recent one in France. The middle class tried to retain an old-world morality in times when moral codes were too lax (as they believed). Part of the moral debate surrounded sexual codes, marriage, religious beliefs and family life. Debates about faith were invariably driven by developments in science that questioned and broke down established ideas. The Church of England faced a crisis as people were divided along the ‘high’ and ‘low’ lines – a crisis driven in part by the conversion of Cardinal John Henry Newman to Catholicism. Darwinism altered the prevailing views of life, divinity, humanity and creation in the latter decades of the century.

Many writers of the mid-Victorian age were involved in what eventually came to be known as the ‘condition of England’ debates. These debates over morality, poverty, education, industrialization and reform are clearly the contexts of the ‘social problem’ novel in Victorian literature.

Today, ‘English Literature’ does not refer to literature produced by England alone. It is now broader in its scope and refers to literatures from various parts of the world and from diverse cultures, written in English. Thus, we have a category, ‘postcolonial literature’, which describes writing from former colonized nations in Asia, Africa and South America. ‘Postcolonial’ here serves as a temporal marker, referring to the period and writing after colonialism (colonialism is the process of settlement by Europeans in non-European, that is, Asian, African, South American and Australian spaces). ‘Postcoloniality’ captures the strategies of resistance, negotiation and cultural assertion that countries such as India adopt to deal with increasing neocolonial interference and control exerted by the ‘developed’, ‘First World’ nations. The ‘postcolonial’ describes a whole new experience of political freedom, new ideologies (of development, for instance, or economic freedom and self-reliance in many postcolonial societies) and new agendas. This postcolonial situation or context has produced an enduring body of writing that has expanded the boundaries of ‘English Literature’. Other terms used to describe these literatures include ‘new literatures in English’ or ‘international literature in English’. Thus, we need to perhaps use the term ‘literatures in English’ rather than ‘English literature’, since most literature is now multicultural, rooted in more than one culture/tradition.

We do, however, need to keep in mind that ‘English Literature’ has been used as an umbrella term to describe writings from Wales, Scotland and Ireland too (countries and cultures that have resisted being clubbed under ‘English’) and even translations and adaptations from European writings.

As pointed out earlier, women writers from the Restoration and Enlightenment have been consistently marginalized from the English literary canon. Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) firmly located Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as the precursor of the English novel. The woman writer's contribution to the genre's rise and evolution has only recently been acknowledged. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and her epistolary tale Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1683), for instance, were pioneers in form and were composed well before Richardson's sentimental novels in the same mode appeared on the scene. The erotic fiction of Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess (1719) had four editions in the first four years. Haywood was a prolific author and had a publication every year in the 1720–30 decade except in 1720 and 1721. In fact, she produced 35% of the total output by women in this period. She produced ten novels in 1725 alone. Psychological realism, often attributed to Defoe, makes its appearance in women writers like Jane Barker. Barker's Loves Intrigues: Or, The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1713) is a first-person narrative about Galesia and her love life.

Recent studies have demonstrated how the 18th century English novel was firmly located in the sexual and gender politics of the age. The main question asked by feminist historians and thinkers is this: why is the contribution of women writers to the development of the novel – to mention only one genre – consistently neglected in literary history?

Traditional literary history treats Shakespeare as the best thing that happened to the English language, English culture and the literature of the entire world. From the 1980s, there has been an opposition to this reading of Shakespeare's greatness. Critics adopting many different theoretical and ideological positions have found problems with Shakespeare's characters, plots and politics. Contemporary critical readings prefer a highly political reading of Shakespeare's literary texts, paying attention to various ideological biases and political issues in his work. This includes the (1) colonial, (2) patriarchal, (3) racial, (4) heterosexist and (5) bourgeois themes embodied in the plays.

The Renaissance presented itself in certain ways – humanist, rational-scientific, universal, liberal – by masking very serious oppressive structures. Homosexuals, women, other races, the working classes, and vagrants and the homeless were exploited, controlled and often became victims of social power structures. Social structures, claiming to be universal and humanitarian, served the interests of the ruling classes. Dissent was put down in the name of social harmony and order. England began to fashion itself as a country favouring justice, fair play and equality by comparing itself with other races (which were being discovered through the voyages). In fact, England's image of itself was constructed precisely through this racial ‘other’, the theoretical opposite of what England was. Terms like ‘fair’ became associated with the colour of the skin when Europe met the dark-skinned races (as shown by Kim Hall in Things of Darkness, 1995.

Alan Bewell's Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999) is a fascinating re-reading of the contextual and textual discourses of Wordsworth and his fellow poets. Bewell notes that a significant context for the Romantic age was colonial expansion. English ships were travelling all over the world. In India, soon to be Britain's greatest possession, the East India Company had transformed itself from a trading body into a political power after Plassey (1757) and Baksar (1764). The money from these colonies was helping a financially drained British exchequer. Colonies in West Indies and Africa also flourished.

This was only one side of the picture. Many Englishmen died in the colonies. Tropical diseases – to which they had no immunity and to which they were being exposed for the first time – claimed their lives in huge numbers in India, West Indies and Africa. Many died during the lengthy voyages too. This meant that many families in England had lost their family members in the colonies. In terms of writing, this was the period when the first treatises on tropical diseases began to get published and circulated in England. Other countries were also mapped in terms of their medical geography (the incidence of specific diseases in certain geographical areas). In fact, Bewell shows how every single Romantic writer, from Wordsworth to Austen, had at least one family member in the colonies, had a colonial connection, and were often familiar with tropical diseases.

The period between 1780 and 1830 is popularly known as the Romantic Age. The Romantic poets are perhaps the most anthologized and studied poets in English literature. Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge have been considered the founding figures of Romanticism and of a whole new way of thinking. However, a closer examination of the contexts reveals that the poets were not ‘inventing’ concepts or ideas, but responding to events and situations around them. Furthermore, elements of Romanticism are visible well before Wordsworth and his visionary company. William Blake, for instance, was already working with ideas and images that looked forward to the Wordsworth–Coleridge collection, Lyrical Ballads.

Reform was underway in the England of the 1780s. Social movements for causes such as the abolition of the slave trade, poor relief, education of the poor, amelioration of prison conditions and numerous other efforts were on to ‘improve’ England. There was also rising social discontent. People wanted greater representation in Parliament. Meanwhile, things were rapidly spiralling towards a crisis in France. In the summer of 1789, the fall of the Bastille prison heralded the French Revolution, an event that was to have a profound impact on English society, ideas and politics. PA Brown's The French Revolution in English History (1918; reprinted in 1923) extensively documents this influence. It also energized new forms of thinking in the realm of literature, as we shall see.

Recent studies of the Victorian era have analysed the overemphasis on masculinity during this period of Empire. Historians of homosexuality have detected what is termed a ‘sexual panic’ in the writings of the age. Effeminate aristocrats, their hangers-on and working-class males were all equally worried about the public appearance of sexual preferences. Male homosexual activities were of course illegal (it was decriminalized only in 1967). However, the debates were never one-sided. Jeremy Bentham, a key thinker, believed that homosexuality should be decriminalized. Contemporary readings have excavated the homosexual themes in many Victorian poets and novelists. The contexts of army life, adventure and travel, the public school system and the empire produced a cult of masculinity.

Twentieth-century critics have suggested that Tennyson's In Memoriam celebrates ‘homosocial’ (rather than homosexual) bonding. Certain passages from the poem offer the homosocial theme readily:

Or, his address to Arthur Hallam:

Here the reference to marriage (‘widowed’) alongside the emotional expressions of love for a ‘brother’ have been seen as veiled expressions of homosexual desire.

Gerard Manley Hopkins sought to negotiate the constraints of his Catholic belief with his homosexuality.

PROSE

Non-fiction

Features of Victorian Non-fiction

1. Didactic essays and social commentaries on environment, politics and society

2. Historical tracts were common

3. Polemical writings on issues like problems of the working class

4. A great deal of critical thinking and writing on art and architecture, which influenced subsequent generations.

The Romantic period marked the rise of the personal essay. During the Victorian period, the essay turned towards social criticism. Some of the most trenchant commentaries and analyses of Victorian society and culture came from figures like Thomas Carlyle. Education, women's conditions, religion and science, the rise and spread of industrial capitalism and the empire were all subjects of essays.

John Henry Newman (1801–90), popularly known as Cardinal Newman, was one of the most influential figures of the age. As a preacher and writer, Newman attracted controversy for his views. He played an important role in the Oxford Movement (see the box Oxford Movement) and published his opinions in Tracts for the Times. In 1845, Newman became a Roman Catholic. His 1852 publication The Idea of a University continues to be read to this day. Newman is also the author of one of the most widely-read spiritual autobiographies, the Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864). He was ordained as a Cardinal in 1879.

This is the second volume containing the original text of the Cheitharon Kumpapa, together with a translation into English and explanatory notes. The problems of translating this text and the methodology I have adopted have been set out in the Introduction to Volume 1. (The Court Chronicle of Manipur: the Cheitharon Kumpapa Vol. 7, 33–1763 ce, Routledge 2005, Indian edition available from Foundation Books, New Delhi, ISBN 978–04–1534–430–5). This Introduction also deals with the nature of the Cheitharon Kumpapa, together with questions of its dating and historical value, and textual matters. These issues equally apply to the present volume and readers are requested to refer back to the Introduction to Volume 1 for clarification as necessary.

Volume 2 covers the period from 1764–1843 ce, that is from the resumption of the kingship by Chingthangkhompa (also known as Bhagyachandra or Jai Singh) until the promotion of Nara Singh from Regent to King in January 1844. During this period the influence of Hinduism increased and the writers of the Cheitharon Kumpapa have used numerous loan words and technical terms imported from Bengali and Sanskrit. A few Hindustani terms were used as well. I have retained the Manipuri spelling for these terms and added explanatory notes.

There are two important British records dating from this period: Capt. R. Boileau Pemberton's Report on the Frontier of British India (Calcutta 1835) and Maj. W. McCulloch's Account of the Valley ofMunipore and the Hill Tribes (Calcutta 1859).