I. The Three Stages of the Enlightenment in English Literature
→The first or the earlier period of the Enlightenmentlasted roughly from the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 to the end of the1730’s and in this period were formed thegeneral principles of the new tendency of the Enlightenment, with the moderategroup dominating the scene and inclined to place great hopes upon the age. Fromthe artistic point of view, this period was characterized by the so-calledneo-classicism in poetry with the leading figure Alexander Pope. During this periodarose also a new prose literature in the essays of Addison and Steele and thefirst realistic fiction of Defoe and Swift.
→The second or more critical period of theEnlightenment stretched from the1740’sand the1750’s. The moreimportant works that appeared during these decades were chiefly the realisticnovels of Richardson, Fielding and Smollett, of whom the last two made ratherfierce attack in the existing social conditions but still maintained sufficientfaith in the final attainment of social justice.
→The third and the last period of the Enlightenment,covering the last decades of the 18thcentury and characterized byhe decline of the Enlightenment was marked by the appearance of new literarytendencies of sentimentalism and pre-romanticism, both coming as the proteststo the social injustices of the day. Sentimentalism which also had itsrepresentative writers in the field of poetry (Edward Young and to a certainextent Thomas Gray) had its flowering in the domain of prose fiction, with thenovels of Laurence Sterne and Oliver Goldsmith. Pre-romanticism manifesteditself chiefly in poetry and had its start in the middle decades of the 18thcentury, but it did not end in triumph till the last decades of the century,when the poetry of William Blake and Robert Burns appeared and became known.Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the chief dramatist of the century, who wrote his playsin the1770’s, belonged moreto the tradition of Fielding and Smollett in spite of his small share also insentimentalism.
II Literature of the Period
2.1Neoclassicism
→The term mainly applies to the classical tendency thatdominate the literature of the early period. It was, at least, the result of a reactionagainst the fires of passion that early blazed in the late Renaissance,especially in the Metaphysical poetry. It found its artistic models in theclassic literature of the ancient Greek and Roman writers and in the contemporaryFrench writers.
→Neo-classicists had fixed some laws and rules foralmost every genre of literature. Prose should be precise, direct, smooth andflexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic.Drama should be written in heroic couplet; the three unities of time, space andaction should be adhered to, and type characters rather than individuals shouldbe represented.
→The 18thcentury witnessed the flourish of English poetry in the classical style,climaxing with John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Much attentionwas given to the wit, form and art of poetry. Besides the elegant poeticstructure and diction, the neo-classic poetry was also noted for itsseriousness and earnestness in tone and constant didacticism.
2.2 Realistic Novel
→The rise andflourish of modern English novel is another important phenomenon of the 18thcentury English literature. The early literature in the Medieval or Renaissanceperiod, as we know, only served the aristocratic class. But now after thebourgeois revolution, the English middle-class was ready to cast away thearistocratic romance and to create a new and realistic literature of their ownto express their ideas and serve their interests. This change of subject matterwas most obvious in the form of realistic novel.
→The Defoe, Richardson,Fielding, Sterne, Goldsmith and Smollett were among the major novelists of thetime. By combing the allegorical tradition of the moral fables with thepicaresque tradition of the lower-caste stories, they achieved in their workboth realism and moral teaching. It found impact in some of the great workersof European writers and paved way for the great 19th-centuryrealistic writers like Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and WilliamThackeray.
2.3 Gothic Novel
→“Gothic Romance” which enjoyed much popularity inEngland in the last decades of the 18thcentury are novels of terrorwhich employ medieval background and contain gloomy sentiment, superstitioushorror and much supernaturalism.
→The Englishrealistic novel as a literary genre flowered in the middle part of the century.In the last decades, however, it gradually gave way to Gothic novel or Gothicromance.
→Gothic romanceas genre, rising after the full development of the Industrial Revolution,served as a reaction to the Enlightenment and rationalist philosophy as well asrealism in literature in the early 18thcentury because neitherrationalism nor realism could reconcile the growing social contradictions of theage. Therefore, somewhat in protest against the meaningless presentation ofrealistic details in realistic fiction, the writers of the Gothic romancesindulged in creating extraordinary situations of mystery and terror, even withthe aide of the supernatural, and with no pretensions to realism. They turnedto the irrational and the unrealistic more to escape from the sharpened socialcontradictions than to set right the world’s wrong and injustice.
→The realoriginator of English Gothic novel was Horace Walpole. And some of the mostpowerful and influential writers are Mrs. Ann Radcliff, Clara Reeve, FannyBurney, William Beckford and Mathew Gregory Lewis.
III. Alexander Pope
Point of View
→As a representative ofEnlightenment, Pope was one of the first to introduce rationalism into England.He believed in the necessity of universal education, especially that of socialmorality, classic culture and scientific knowledge. He assumed the role ofchampion of traditional civilization and undertook it as his duty to “correct”and enlighten people through his poetry.
→Pope as a bourgeoisconservative with aristocratic bias. He upheld the existing social system as anideal one, saying, “Whatever is, is right.” As a poet, he used satire in hisworks to fight against social corruption and debasement, which according to himthreatened to undermine the moral and social values of the day.
→As a poet of neoclassicschool, Pope was certainly the greatest of his age. He strongly advocatedclassicism, emphasizing that literary works should be judged by classicalrules. He acted strongly against the lowering of literature standards by thehack journalism of the bourgeoisie. He believed that literature had the powerto influence and enrich life, to educate and correct people. He set out in hisworks to fulfil his duty, with numerous witty remarks and satires and perfectverse form.
Main Features
→Pope is a witty man with atalent for saying brilliant and true things in a sparkling way. His writingsusually consist in the apt association of thoughts and expressions, which arethe very quintessence of common sense and calculated to surprise or delight by theirunexpectedness.
→Pope is a great versesatirist. Almost all his works are satires. The aim of his satire is to burnaway the falsity and corruption. Also, he uses his satires to fight hispersonal enemies.
→Heroic couplet is the form fornearly all Pope’s writings. It was Pope who carried it to its last stage ofperfection.
→Pope’s works are usuallyproducts of hard labour and mastery of craftsmanship. They are marked bycareful diction, a remarkable rhythmical variety of patterns, precision of meaning,harmony of language and structure, a firm control of the form, and flexibilityof styles.
Influence
→Pope was known as a great poetin his day and he exerted much influence upon the other writers of the age.
→Following in the steps ofDryden he popularised the neo-classical literary tradition brought from France.
→He was one of the earlyrepresentatives of the Enlightenment who introduced into English culture thespirit of rationalism and greater interest in the human world, though he upheldthe social status quo, political and social and philosophical of his day.
→He was a great satirist and arather sound though sometimes opinionated critic. He occupied such a prominentplace in the literary world of his time that not infrequently the literary epochof early 18th-centuryEnglandhas been named after him asthe age of Pope.
→He should be remembered forhis classicism, as a powerful satirist, as a poet who displayed his sharp witin brilliant verse and gave us many memorable and quotable lines in Englishpoetry, and finally as a writer who exerted his great influence upon theliterature of his own day and of later centuries, especially upon Byron.
Major Works
—→“An Essay on Criticism”
Theme
→Pope’s “Essay onCriticism” was a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism, butPope dealt with criticism on poetry rather than on drama and he expressed hisviews more emphatically and openly than Dryden, especially exalting the classicrules or standards by which poems should be judged.
Structure
→Consisting of 744lines and divided into three parts, the poem opens with the author bewailingthe death of true taste in critics and stating the need to turn to nature asthe dearth of the true taste in critics and stating the need to turn to natureas the best guide for critic judgements. Then the Ancients are praised andtheir rules, which are regarded as “Methodised” nature, are to studies andturned to for guidance. (Part I)
→Then Popeenumerates the dangers that may beset the critics and lead them into faultyCriticisms, and here the poet refers particularly to the literary scene of hisday, including the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. (Part II)
→Finally the authorgives the rules to be adopted by the critics and traces the history of literarycriticism from Aristotle down to Boileau and Roscommon. (part III)
Features of the “An Essay onCriticism”
→In “Essay onCriticism”, though Pope showed his great respect for the great ancient Greekand Roman poet and for the great critics of classicism, yet in the quarrelbetween the Ancients and the Moderns which started in France and was carried oninEnglandfrom the Restoration to the early 18thcentury Pope adopted therational attitude of not showing any generalized preference either for theModerns but declared it necessary to judge each individual work according toits own merit or demerit.
→And like Dryden,Pope also had great respect and admiration for Shakespeare in spite of thelatter’s obvious neglect of the classic rules of drama.
—→“The Rape of the Lock”
Features of the Poem
→“The Rape of theLock” was written in the form of a mock-heroic poem, composed originally withthe idea of assuaging the enmity between the two families arising out of the “rape”of the “l(fā)ock”.
→Making use ofnymphs and other mythological apparatuses and giving elaborate description ofsmall details in a leisurely and even haphazard way, Pope succeeded inproducing effective satirical pictures of the idle, meaningless life of thelords and ladies in the aristocratic-bourgeois society of 18th-centuryEngland, though the satire is usually rather mild and somewhat diluted withhumour.
→And the heroiccouplet here proved to be particularly supple as a convenient vehicle for thesubtle satire.
→“The Rape of theLock” shows Pope’s achievement in the field of social satire and its influenceupon Byron’s similar satirical pictures of the idle aristocratic life inEnglish in “Don Juan”
—→“The Dunciad”
Features of the Poem
→“The Dunciad” isnevertheless is not alone a powerful satire on Pope’s rival writers in the veinof pure personal enmity but it also gives in the spirit of the Enlightenment abroad satirical picture of the whole literary life in early 18thcentury England. While it is supposed to ridicule the dull works of the dullpoets of his day, Pope was actually engaged in the general struggle againstignorance and barbarism as well as “dullness” and “emptiness” all around him.
→The poem containsmany witty thrusts at dull and bad poetry that essentially age-less and stillof interest today.
—→“An Essay on Man”
→It reveal Pope’sphilosophical and political stand of an Enlightener as well as the stronginfluence upon him of Deism. Pope gives his political and philosophical viewson human nature and man’s relations with the universe, the society and himself.
→The essay is alsoan important work of enlightenment. The essay on the study as the only subject,the rationalism and extremely practical morality, the optimistic view of socialprogress and, above all, the positive view of the existing social system makeup a complete picture of Pope, the great enlightener.
IV. Thomas Gray
Major Works
—→“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
→While many criticspraise the poem as the acme of graveyard poetry and for its artistic polish andmany quotable lines, to us the most valuable thing consists in the democraticsentiments of the poet. Although in the “Elegy” as in Gray’s other poems, theuse of artificial poetic diction and inverted word order mars the effect of theverse and shows its adherence to the neo-classical tradition, the vividdescriptions of nature and the spirit of melancholy and romanticism, while theartistic polish as shown in the metrical beauty and in the succinct phrasing ina number of lines and stanzas gives the “Elegy” a distinguished place in 18th-centuryEnglish poetry, towering above most of Gray’s other poems and also many worksby other minor poets of the period.
V. William Blake
Points of View
→Blake never tried to fit theworld; he was a rebel innocently and completely all his life. He waspolitically of the permanent left. Meanwhile he cherished great expectationsand enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and regarded it as a necessary stageleading to the millennium predicted by the biblical prophets.
→Blake acceptsChristianity when young, but reverses its value later on. He recognizes thecoexistence of good and evil. He thinks that it is wrong to separate the bodyfrom the soul in an individual being.
→Literarily Blake was the firstimportant Romantic poet, showing contempt for the rule of reason, opposing theclassical tradition of the 18thcentury, and treasuring theindividual’s imagination.
Literary Features
→William Blakebelieved all other people could see through the efforts of painting and poetry.As an imaginative poet, he presents his view in visual images instead ofabstract terms.
→Blake writes his poems inplain and direct language. His poems often carry the lyric beauty with immensecompression of meaning. He distrusts the abstractness and tends to embody hisviews with visual images. Symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive featureof his poetry.
Two Groups of Blake’s Poems
→his early lyrical poemsincluding the three volumes of “The Poetical Sketches”, “The Songs of Innocence”and “The Songs of Experience”
→his later “Prophetic Books”that contain all the other poems by Blake from “Tiriel” and “The Book of Thel”to “Milton” and “Jerusalem” and “The Ghost of Abel”
Major Works:
Early Lyrical Poems
—→“The Poetical Sketches”
→It is a collectionof youthful verse. Joy, laughter, love and harmony are the prevailing notes.And new elements of poetry derived from the earlier traditions can also befound, which hint at his later innovative style and themes.
—→“The Songs of Innocence”
→“The Songs ofInnocence” is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world,though without its evils and sufferings.
→“The Songs ofInnocence” shows Blake’s advance in his artistic achievement as poet. Here theappeal seems to be chiefly to children and most of the poems in the collectionhave a strange, simple beauty both in their themes and in their language andverse form and rhythm. Here in this volume, Blake’s indulgence of symbolismalready finds its expression.
—→“The Songs of Experience”
→“The Songs ofExperience” paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war andrepression with a melancholy tone.
→“The Songs ofExperience” is certainly the most important volume of all Blake’s poetry, becauseit is a much maturer work than either “Poetical Sketches” or “The Songs ofInnocence” and it dose not have the great handicap of obscurity of the “PropheticBooks”.
→Though these poemsare all short and lyrical and still assume the childlike tone and use simplelanguage, we may see clearly the poet’s much deeper and more penetratingobservation of reality here than in the two earlier books.
→The poems in “TheSong of Experience” have attained to a strange height of lyrical beauty,because in form these songs hearken back to the great lyrics of the Renaissanceera, but the very sombreness of their themes, with curious mixture of socialcriticism and otherworldly mysticism, gives these poems much high seriousnessthat stands in sharp contrast with the light-hearted fun of the 16th–century lyrics.
→The famous poem “Tyger”is an interesting example of the odd mixture of the simple and the childlikewith the serious and the thoughtful. “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” is thesimplest question in the world, but it is also a very penetrating question onreligion and on the whole world of nature, as well as indication of Blake themystic trying fruitlessly to find social harmony and even universal harmony inhis visible world of contradictions and chaos. Here Blake’s budding mysticismenters into a perfect blending with his superb lyricism; no wonder the poem hasbeen considered so typical of Blake and one of his best lyrics.
—→“The Marriage of Heaven andHell”
→“The Marriage ofHeaven and Hell” marks his entry into maturity. The poem, which was composedduring the climax of the French Revolution, plays the double role both as asatire and a revolutionary prophecy. In this poem, Blake explores the relationshipof the contraries. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate,are necessary to human existence. Life is a continual conflict ofgive-and-take, a paring of opposites, of good and evil, of innocence and experience,of body and soul.
☆In his later period, Blakewrote quite a few prophetic books, such as “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”,“The First Book of Urizen”, “America”, and “Europe”, which reveal him as theprophet of universal political and spiritual freedom an show the poet himselfas the spokesman of revolt. In “Milton”he gives an elaborate account of the mystic’s duty to wrestle for the salvationof the country and of all mankind. “The Four Zoas” is his first epicinterpretation of man’s lapse into division and of his eventual coming into theheavenly city, though it marred by the poet’s failure to give full imaginativereality to his mythological figures. And in “Jerusalem”, Blake also expounds his theory ofimagination, asserting that the world of imagination is the world of eternity.
VI. Robert Burns
Major Poems
☆So far as the theme concerned, Burns’ poems can bedivided into four groups. The first important group is about love andfriendship. Burns himself had revealed several love affairs during his life andwrote a number of wonderful love poems. His love songs are not of tragic partingbut of mutual contented love, sometimes exquisitely blended with humor. “A Red,Red Rose” is good example of love poems, while “John Anderson, My Jo” is a goodpoem on friendship
☆Another major group is about the rural life of theScottish peasants. Many of the poems in this group deal with the “joie de vivre”.In this respect, he had little in common with the solitary and imaginativeRomantic poets.
☆The third group shows the poet’s attitude towardpolitical liberty and social equality, especially under the influence of theFrench Revolution. The best known of this group is “For A’ That and A’ That”.
☆And the last group is about satirical verse such as “The
Holy Fair”, “Address to the Deil”, exposing the hypocrisy of the rich, the
bigotry.
General Comments
→Actually, Burn’s poetry should be appreciated notmerely for its beautiful lyricism, but also for his fiery sentiments of hatredfor tyranny and his affectionate sympathy for the common peasant folk ofScotland and for all the oppressed and the lowly, whether in his lyrics andnarrative poems or in his political verse and verse-satires. There can be nodoubt that Burns deserves to be considered the greatest poetScotlandhasever produced.
VII. Jonathan Swift
Points of View
→Swift was not reallypolitically biased, thought he was forced to make a choice between the Whig andthe Tory. What he stood for was truth, justice, equality, and rights of man. Hehad always regarded himself as a defender of human freedom. He had known povertyand wanted to be rich, but he hated the life of the nobles and showed contemptfor the money-grabbing bourgeoisie.
Literary Features
→Swift is one of the greatest
writers of satire prose, marked by his great simplicity, directness, and vigour
of his style—simple and concrete diction, uncomplicated syntax,economy and conciseness of language.
→His simplicities, more oftenthan not, are a camouflage for insidious intensions, and for big seriousmatters. An outward earnestness, innocence and an apparently cold impartialtone render his satire all the more powerful and effective. Sometimes even aferocious joke does the job. His “A Modest Proposal”, a ferocious joke really,is generally held as the example of best satirical work in English.
→When we emphasized hisabandonment if “serious” or “l(fā)ofty” styles brought to high refinement by Drydenand Pope, we do not exclude his indebtedness to the old tradition. It is byadapting and modifying the old forms and techniques, by infusing them with hisown strong personality that he is able to play with learned or pseudo-learnedideas, to put forward his own judgement, and to carry his parody, satire andcondemnation until “the wit of man carry it no further”
→Swift is in the habit ofwriting in the capacity of a fictitious character. This provides himopportunities to let out his pent-up emotions and also allows him freedom inthe choice of idioms that are appropriate to the assumed character, and style,which is most suitable to his theme and purpose.
Major Works
☆Swift wrote much verse as wellas prose. And certainly today Swift’s poems are seldom read or remembered,except for some very few of his humorous pieces, including “Verses on the Deathof Dr. Swift” and possibly “On Poetry: A Rhapsody”(a humorous and satirical bitof literary criticism). Of Swift’s prose writings the most important works arehis earlier essays “The Battle of the Books” and “A Tale of a Tub”, hispamphlets onIreland“The Drapier’s Letters” and “A Modest Proposal”, and his greatest book “Gulliver’sTravels”.
—→“The Battle of the Books”
→It deals with thecurrent question of the so-called quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.Here Swift is shown to be definitely a neo-classicist by favouring the Ancientsand the famous episodes of the Spider and the Bee illustrates Swift’s literarytheory that great writers should draw from nature.
—→“A Tale of a Tub”
→It is a moreeffective prose satire, a devastating attack upon Christian religion itself. “ATale of a Tub” is a satire first of all on religion, but also on modernlearning and on the governments and philosophies of the past and of Swift’s ownday. It certainly seems odd for Swift as a clergyman to write disrespectfullyabout the Christian churches.
—→“The Drapier’s Letters”
→Of the fourepistles that make up “The Drapier’s Letters”, the fourth and the last isunquestionably the most important, besides arguing with definite facts and mucheloquence against the debased coin and its author Wood, Swift spoke up onbehalf of the Irish people in the fundamental issue of English tyranny and theloss of freedom for the whole Irish people.
—→“A Modest Proposal”
→“A Modest Proposal”,which came as one of the last expressions of Swift’s consistent fight for theIrish people, is the greatest and the bitterest of his Irish tracts.
→“A Modest Proposal”was written with much conciseness and terseness and is by far the mostconsummate artistic expression of Swift’s indignation toward the terribleoppression and exploitation of the Irish people by the English ruling class,especially of the poor Irish peasants by the rich English landlords.
—→“Gulliver’s Travels”
Theme
→It exposes the uglyappearances of the British ruling class. It criticizes he declining feudalismand the new capitalist relations. It attacks the aggressive wars andcolonialism in the 18thcentury.
Features of the “Gulliver’sTravels”
→Artistically, “Gulliver’sTravels” is at once a fantasy and a realistic work of fiction. Though the storyis quite frankly invented and unreal, it is told in a very vivid and convincingway and it contains some very direct descriptions of men and things in 18thcenturyEnglandbesides the numerous indirect references to conditions of author’s own day.
→The four parts of thebook project the writer’s satires in different ways.
VIII. Samuel Johnson
Point of View
→Johnson was the last greatneo-classicist enlightener in the later 18thcentury. He was veryconcerned with the theme of the vanity of human wishes, and tried to awaken mento his folly.
→In literary creation andcriticism, he was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for much ofthe newly rising form of literature and his fondness for those writings carrieda lot of moralizing and philosophising. He insisted that a writer should adhereto universal truth and experience, should please and instruct. He was particularlyfond of didacticism.
Form and Style
→Johnson’s style is typicallyneo-classical, but it is at the opposite extreme from Swift’s simplicity orAddison’s neatness. His language is characteristically general, often Latinateand frequently polysyllabic. His sentences are long and well structured,interwoven with parallel words and phrases. However, no matter how complex hissentences are, the thought is always clearly expressed; though he tended to use“l(fā)earned words”, they are accurately used.
Major Works
☆Samuel Johnson hada varied literary career. He had a hand in all the different branches ofliterary activities. He was a poet, dramatist, prose romancer, biographer,essayist, critic, lexicographer and publicist, besides being a great talker anda sort of literary dictator at his club and before his numerous admirers of thetime. Samuel Johnson was not a great poet.
Poems
—→“London”
Analysis of the Poem
→The poem was writtenin Pope’s manner, in heroic couplets and written with much conciseness andpolish in the true classical style.
→It was neverthelessthe immature work of the young poet. There are many lies in it that are nearlyliteral translations from Juvenal, and many other adaptations from Dryden’sversion in imitation of Juvenal. And the satirical description of thedegeneracy in the aristocratic-bourgeois society inLondon, including the sufferings of the poorand the arrogance of the wealthy, cannot but reveal the poet’s real, personalfeelings
→In this poem thereis also a bitter critical remark on the contemptible pension system of SirRobert Walpole, the Prime Minister.
—→“The Vanity of Human Wishes”
Analysis of the Poem
→It is a long andmore mature poem. Here, with the curiously mixed sentiments of pessimism andmoral fortitude, Johnson tries to point out how utterly vain all humanambitions and endeavours are.
→This poem isdifferent from and in a way superior to similar satires by Dryden and Popebecause Johnson deals here with general picture of the society of his timeinstead of attacking any particular persons who are his own personal enemies asdid both Dryden and Pope.
→The succinctness oflanguage and the dignified poise of the heroic couplet further add toe themerits of Johnson’s poem.
Tragedy
—→“Irene”
Features of the Play
→Itis a blank verse written strictly in the classical style.
→The plot is notwell developed in the play which contains only a series of interest on moralthemes and is known for its frigidity. It is a rather juvenile piece of workand one of the least important literary products of Johnson’s.
Lexicography
—→“The Dictionary of the EnglishLanguage”
Significance
→“The Dictionary ofthe English Language” which first brought fame to Samuel Johnson is truly amonumental work, considering the facts that he laboured on it virtuallysingle-handed, that it far exceeded anything of the kind before his time, thathis borrowing from the few similar lexicographical efforts before him werepractically negligible, and that it was the first standard work which containssound definitions and uses illustrative quotations from authorities.
→It remained for acentury the unrivalled authority for the English language, and all Englishdictionaries since its time have been obviously indebted to it. However,Johnson’s dictionary has its one serious shortcoming owing to the lexicographer’setymological deficiencies so that the early forms of the language as well asthe growth of words and significations are not sufficiently paid attention to inthe work.
Literary Criticism
—→“Letter to the RightHonourable The Earl of Chesterfield”
→The letter has beendeservedly considered among the best of Johnson’s works, being a forceful andeloquent expression of the poor writer’s defiant assertion of his independencefrom begging for patronage from the great.
—→“Lives of the Poets”
→The most of his “Lives”contain three parts: an account of the biographical facts, an analysis of thepersonal traits and character, as well as comments on the poetry, Johnson’spersonal knowledge of a number of his contemporary poets becomes useful insupplying ample facts to these “Lives”.
→The fullest and the most sympathetic treatment isnaturally given to those poets who belonged to the same literary tradition ofneo-classicism. It has been said that Johnson is especially unfair toMiltonand to Gray,although he did give due praise to “Paradise Lost” and “Elegy Written in aCountry Churchyard”. On the whole, he generally approaches them from the standof a moralist and a philosopher and so cannot appreciate those poems; he alsocares for rhymed verse and generally thinks little of blank verse.
IX. Daniel Defoe
Points of View
→Defoe was a typical man of the 18thcenturyEnglish middle class. His works are reflections of the middle class, which hebelonged.
→He valued the Puritan ethic and believed in diligenceand self-indulgence.
→At the same time, he had a heart broad and readyenough to embrace all the people, including social outlaws, and took it a dutyto work for the welfare of all the people. He was among the first writers everto give concern to the problems of the social outcast.
Features of Defoe’s Novel
→Though most of his works are written in the picaresquetradition, Defoe is, in fact, an anti-romantic, anti-feudal realistic writer.His stories are all real concerns of his time: people in their realisticstruggle to overcome the natural or social environment. To convince the readerof the truth of his stories, Defoe adopted the autobiographical form and madefull use of his long trained journalistic skill by describing things in greatdetail and by using specific time and place.
→Defoe’s style is characterized by a plain, smooth,easy, direct, and almost colloquial but never coarse language. His works aremuch closer to the vernacular of the ordinary people. He often used long,rambling sentence without strong pauses to give his style an urgent, immediatebreathless quality, but the units of meaning are small and clear with frequentrepetition so that the writing gives an impression of simple lucidity. In hisnovels, as in his own life, actions or people in action are stressed; there isnot much plot or portrayal of characters, except the exact journalistic accountof the daily, trivial happenings. In a word, Defoe might not be a great artist,but he is definitely an excellent story-teller.
MajorWorks
☆Defoe was also a voluminous
writer of pamphlets and articles for the journals, but his achievement in that
respect were eclipsed by Addison and Steele in their papers for “The Tatler”
and “The Spectator” and as a prose his novels are certainly much more important
than his journalistic works. Of his novels the best known is“Robinson Crusoe”
—→“Robinson Crusoe”
Features of the Novel
→Robinsonas a hero and “Robinson Crusoe” as a book have been so widely knownand read, chief because in these brilliant scenesof the hero’s adventures alone on the desert island for 28 years. Here we see theglorification of the bourgeois man who has the courage and will to facehardships and the ingenuity and determination to preserve himself and improveon his livelihood by struggle against nature.
→Thevery detailed descriptions of he steps taken, one after another, by the hero toprovide for himself, are managed by great skill by the author, not elaboratedwith exaggerations or romantic colourings but told in a simple, straightforward style, and this adds realistic effect to the story.
→Defoe’sstory differs fundamentally from the cult of primitivism or the “return tonature” such as was advocated by many 18thcentury EuropeanEnlighteners, for Robinson Crusoe never for a moment want to give up thecivilization of his age and go back to the primitive existence and even when hehad to struggle with nature he does so with the use of all available productsof that civilization.
—→“Moll Flanders”
Features of the Novel
→Thoughthe stories in the four novels are vastly different one from another, they allfollow one pattern: tracing the personal history of the hero or heroine of alow origin from his or her early unfortunate childhood through manyvicissitudes of life, with ups and downs of personal fortune, to finalprosperity or death and repentance.
→The dual role of the authorboth as a bourgeois adventurer who struggles unscrupulously for the right tolive in prosperity and as a Puritan who is not without moral compunctions overhis own sins and crimes, necessarily makes Defoe place the blame on the onehand upon his adventurer hero or heroine for sinning and on the other hand alsoupon society for more or less forcing the poor to commit sins and crimes.
→The vivid portrait of theheroine and the extremely simple and lucid and artless language distinguish thenovel as one of the most interesting as well as the most artisticallysatisfactory works of fiction of early 18th-century England.
X. Samuel Richardson
General Comments onSamuel Richardson
→Richardson is an outstanding novelist because he hadmuch sympathy for women in their inferior social status and entered intodetailed psychological study of his female characters.
→Therefore the social criticism in his novels is feebleand ineffectual, and his sympathy for the suffering heroine ends in sentimentality,making him the earliest exponent of he sentimental tradition in 18thcentury English literature.
→Here lies both the strength and the weakness ofRichardson: on the one hand the subtle psychological analysis of sufferingwomanhood in a hostile society and on the other hand sentimentality or too muchsentiment that dilutes any social protest there may be in the novel.
Major Works
—→“Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”
Plot and Structure
→Thefirst epistolary novel in the English language, “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”,is written in the form of a very long series of letters, supposedly by a youngmaid-servant Pamela Andrews to her parents and two friends telling them ingreat detail her adventures at her employer’s house.
Significance
→Thechief contribution of Richardson’s “Pamela” to the development of the Englishnovel lies in the penetrating psychological study of the heroine employed forthe first time in English prose fiction.
—→“Clarissa Harlowe”
Theme
→The main theme of the novel,as described by Richardson on the title pages is: “the distress that mayattended the misconduct both parents and children in relation to marriage.” Itis a warning to the idealistic against putting one’s trust in anyone oranything except one’s own conscience and judgement, but the story Clarissaproves more than that.
Plot and Structure
→Thefirst part of the novel has to do chiefly with her revolt against familytyranny, against the “arranged” marriage so prevalent in the feudal-bourgeoisworld
→Thesecond and the major part of the novel has to do with Clarissa’s fight againstvillainy represented chiefly by Lovelace, and this is no less than the struggleof a helpless virtuous young woman against a wicked social environmentsymbolized by an aristocratic rake and his numerous accomplices.
Features of the Novel
→Tobe able to present and examine the moral and emotional problems, the inner lifeof his characters, to achieve immediacy, intensity, truthfulness and dramaticeffect in speech, and to remain objective in the presentation by staying out ofthe action, Richardson sticks to the use of epistolary method. The result is abook very moving, instantaneous, animated and realistic but rather clumsy,repetitive, artificial and too long.
Significance
→Inshort, the novel “Clarissa Harlowe” is the first attack against thedehumanizing forces in society, the first exploration of the relationshipbetween the individual and the society, and the first psychological study ofhuman emotion and motive, and the first modern tragedy in novel form.
→“ClarissaHarlowe” not only popular in England but had its far-fetching influence on theEuropean Continent. InEnglandthe novel had its effect upon Fanny Burney of the last decades of the 18thcentury and upon Jane Austen of the early 19thcentury. Theinfluence was not always a wholesome one, for more often than not, it was thesentimentality here, in the tearful episodes of Clarissa’s remorse and sorrow,that was appreciated by the
XI. Henry Fielding
Point of View
→As both a civil officer and agreat enlightener, he sets out from the very beginning to attack the socialinjustice and inequality, hypocrisy and vice, and corruptness of thegovernment. His sympathy is always with the kind, honest poor people.
→Fielding is much concernedabout the society, about its people and its moral aspects as reflected in theeveryday life. His understanding of human nature is realistic and exact. It iscomposed two sides: the good and bad. In his opinion, human nature is not withoutflaws; it is human to err.
→In terms of literature,Fielding is the first theorist of modern English novel. From the very outset,he is trying a new form of writing, with its burlesque in both style anddiction of classic epic, a “comic epic,” as he puts in “Joseph Andrews”. Byresorting to the older traditional form, he tries to give a realisticinterpretation of the contemporary life of the common people with their diversepersonalities and interests. Finally in both theory and practice, Fieldingestablishes once and fall all forms of the English novel. He has a uniqueposition in the history of English literature by being called the “Father of theEnglish Novel”.
Special Features of Fielding
→Fielding is a mater of style.His style is easy, unlabored and familiar, but extremely vivid and vigorous. Itis usually a combination of the grand with the plain. His language command isadmirable. There is a constant control over his style, while his tone varies inaccordance with the contents and his purposes. The sentences are always logicaland rhythmic. The structures of his novel are always well planned and oftenimitations of the classics.
→The characters, eachindispensable to the development of the plot, are true to life, really lovable andadmirable.
→His writings are also notedfor dramatic dialogues and other devices such as suspense, coincidence andunexpectedness, with which he once more a successful theatrical career.
Major Works
—→“Jonathan Wild”
Theme
→The central pointin the novel is political satire, directed first of all at Sir Robert Walpolethe prime minister.
→Aside from itseffect of a strong political satire, “Jonathan Wild” is also an expose of theEnglish bourgeois society of the 18thcentury.
Artistic Features
→The novel ispowerful satire in the picaresque tradition which links this early fictionalwork of Fielding’s with his last plays likewise of sharp political and socialsatire.
→And language isfull of irony and sarcasm that fits the theme and intensifies the satire,although occasionally the repetitious remarks on what constitutes true “greatness”get a little tiring.
—→“Joseph Andrews”
Theme
→“Joseph Andrews” is an interesting parody of “Pamela”,but its significance lies more in the broad picture of the English societywhere the members of the ruling classes oppress the common people and where thepoor folks are the ones to help those in misery.
Character Portrayal
→Parson
Adams→Parson Adams is more of an outstanding person andseems to be the true hero in the novel who has simple faith in the eventualoutcome of happiness for the upright as well as naive courage to fight for theright things whenever necessary.
Features of the Novel
→Here we may see Fielding’s intentional creation of asituation of a boy servant tempted by his mistress as a parody on Richardson’sversion in “Pamela” of a girl servant chased after by her master, and the hitis driven home by making Joseph the very brother of Pamela and Lady Booby akinsman of Mr. B.
→The hero’s lengthy journey reveals two things: a vividpicture of the English highway and a most lively portrait of the eccentricfigure, Parson Adams.
—→“Thomas Jones”
Features of the Novel
→“Thomas Jones” hasgenerally been considered Fielding’s masterpiece, as certainly it is the mostambitious of his four novels, for in it the author has given us a vivid andtruthful panoramic view of English life in the 18thcentury and hastried to construct a well-knit, complete story in the form of what he calls acomic epic poem in prose.
→And what is of greater significance, the novel showsdistinctly the writer’s great sympathy for the poor and the oppressed as wellas his very definite antipathy toward all the wicked and deceitful persons andtheir bad and terrible actions.
→Fielding condemnsthe hypocrites of the “civilized” world of his day and praises the simple folkof “good heart”. This bears some resemblance to the philosophical view of “returnto nature” in the age of Enlightenment that advocates the return to natural orprimitive existence. However Fielding does not wish to go to the length ofdiscarding the “civilization” of his age, he only approves of simple peoplelike Tom and Sophia with their “natural” morality and “natural philosophy”. Onthe other hand, Fielding favourably contrasts “natural” morality with the hypocriticalPuritan morality thatRichardsonadvocates in “Pamela”
→“Thomas Jones” hasalso been praised for its excellent plot construction. The three big divisionsof the adventures of the hero and the heroine not only give us panoramicpictures of the country but also provide varied portraits of all sorts of menand women. Though the places and the people described are various, the story isalways engrossing and there is continuity. Every thread is clearly laid out asit is carried on, laid aside or resumed. Even the stories within the story areexpertly managed.
→The language too isalways one of the extreme charity and suppleness. The author frequentlyintervenes in his own person and talks to his readers in a very intimate way.
Features of the Poetry
→Different from Fielding’s earlier novels, “Amelia” isa much sombre work dealing with grimmer social reality of the day, but on theother hand it has a much narrower scope. It has to do chiefly with the moral degeneracyof the noble and the rich.
→In “Amelia” Fielding the magistrate naturally devotedmuch space to an expose of the English law and prisons of his day. And particularlypenetrating are the occasional satirical thrusts at the thoroughly egoisticnature of some members of the ruling class inEnglandat the time.
XII. Oliver Goldsmith
MajorWorks
☆Gold Smith was anovelist, a poet, a dramatist and a writer of journalistic prose and essays, andis now chiefly remembered for his only novel “The Vicar of Wakefield”, his twolong poems “The Deserted Village” and “The Traveller”, his comedy “She Stoopsto Conquer”.
Poems
—→“The Traveller”
General Ideas of the Poem
→“TheTraveller” was the first poem to establish Goldsmith’s reputation as a poet.
→Here the authormakes the traveller sitting in the summit of the Alps Mountain to comment on themerits and shortcomings of different countries of Europe.
→Goldsmith goes onto draw a vivid picture of the depopulated England countryside at the time as aresult of the large-scale enclosure of public land in the 18thcentury.
—→“The Deserted Village”
General Ideas of the Poem
→“The DesertedVillage” was a sharp protest against the expropriation of the peasants as aresult of the large-scale enclosures of common land for the rich landlord andcapitalists.
→Besides, the poet’sfalse idealization of the happy life in the past shows his unhealthy yearningfor the return of the patriarchal society of long ago. Here we see Goldsmith’sconservative stand, looking backward with nostalgia at the deserted village,which merely illustrated the replacement of the feudal countryside bycapitalist agriculture.
☆Both poems arewritten in heroic couplet, and the succinctness of language as well as theconcise and unelaborated descriptions show the two poems to belong verydefinitely to the poetic tradition of neo-classicism.
Comedies
—→“She Stoops to Conquer”
Features of the Play
→The basic comicsituation of the play arises out of the wide gap between the different class.
→The theatricaldevices of disguise and mistaken identity employed leads to a delightfuldramatic irony.
→The secondary plotalso reveals the playwright’s dramatic skill.
Novel
—→“The Vicar of Wakefield”
Features of the Novel
→“The Vicar of
Wakefield” is told in the first person singular by the central character of the
novel—the Reverend Dr. Primrose, the vicar.
→“The Vicar ofWakefield” has the distinction of having as its hero a poor vicar of thecountryside, a simple, kind-hearted figure and the narrative deals with thejoys and sorrows of this simple, poor family, while the numerous misfortunesbefalling the Primroses point to the miseries of the oppressed people as wellas the cruelty, hypocrisy and moral degradation of the wicked feudal landlordand of the city bourgeoisie.
→Thevicar as the central character of the novel remains a vivid character-creationthat marks the novel “The Vicar of Wakefield” a great and popular work offiction though the plot is conventional enough and there are few strikingscenes of dramatic power or lyric beauty. But in the portrayal of the extremelysimple vicar there is almost a touch of nostalgia for simplicity and innocencein the primitive patriarchal society and a very definite note ofsentimentalism.
XIII. Richard BrinsleySheridan
Dramatic Features
→Sheridan’s plays are theproduct of a dramatic genius as well as of a well-versed theatrical man. Thoughhis dramatic techniques are largely conventional, they are exploited to thebest advantage. His plots are well organized; his characters, either major orminor, are all sharply drawn; and his manipulation of such devices aredisguise, mistaken identity and dramatic irony is masterly. Witty dialogues andneat and decent language also make a characteristic of his plays.
→Sheridan shows himself a greatdramatist and a great master of stagecraft and his comedies, “The Rivals”, “TheSchool for Scandal” serves as important links between the masterpieces ofShakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw, as true classics in English comedy.
Major Works
—→“The Rivals”
Theme
→“The Rivals” isessentially a clever satire on the sentimental and pseudo-romantic fancies ofmany young women of the upper class of the day, who fell victim into thesentimental novels and to the illusion represented in those novels of harmonybetween romantic dreams and the real bourgeois world of practical moneyconcerns.
Features of the Play
→In this comedy, wefind Sheridan following more or less the tradition of Ben Jonson’s comedy ofhumours, with the exaggeration of a single trait in each of the characters for thepurpose of satire.
→Through all thesecharacters Sheridan aims his ridicule at cowards and braggarts and amorous oldfools in the bourgeois-aristocratic English society, and the “blue stockings”of the day, ignorant women posing as learned ones.
—→“The School for Scandal”
Theme
→It is a satire on theimmorality and hypocrisy behind the mask of upright living and high-soundingmoral principles of the aristocratic-bourgeois society in the 18thcentury England.
Features of the Play
→The dialogue in theplay is brilliantly witty throughout, and there are no suggestions of loosemorals nor indulgence in indecent language as to be found in Restorationcomedies of manners.
→The plot is notloosely hung together here as in the Restoration comedies, but is carefullyworked out and shows the playwright’s perfect mastery of stagecraft in hisexpertly manipulation of disguise and mistaken identity and dramatic irony.
→The comedy containsa number of brilliant and hilariously comic scenes. (such as the scenes ofscandal-mongering, those of the family quarrels between Sir Peter and LadyTeazle, and above all, the famous auction scene in which Charles Surface sellshis family portraits and the still more famous screen scene in which dramaticirony reaches its height of excitement with two persons concealed at twodifferent places in the same room)
