Carlyle, Arnold, and Wilde: Art and the Departure from Humanism to Aestheticism in the Victorian Era

The Victorian era of British literature spanned almost an entire century and saw writers from Carlyle to Rossetti, Kipling to Barrett Browning, and Dickens to Tennyson. The fabric of London changed as industry and invention flourished, along with poverty and social decay. Significant changes in politics, science, and religious thinking emerged as well. As British society moved further away from its roots in agriculture and devout religion, British literature also moved further away from its roots in Renaissance humanism towards the decadence and aestheticism that characterize late nineteenth-century works. By tracing the shift of styles and use of rhetorical devices in Victorian literature, the story of Victorian England and the changes in philosophies emerges