The Eighteenth Century

The Eighteenth Century A The 18th Century England England entered a period of comparatively peaceful development 1 The two parties Tory and Whig were so well balanced that power shifted easily from one to the other 2 The rapid development of social life 3000 public coffeehouses and many clubs was an expression The literature of the century is remarkably complex but we may classify it all under four general heads 1 The reign of so called Classicism or Neoclassicism 2 Enlightenment Movement and Sentimentalism 3 The Beginning of the Modern Novel 4 The Revival of Romantic Poetry B Literary Characteristics The first half of the century is an age of prose owing largely to the fact that the practical and social interests of the age demanded expression Modern newspapers like the Chronicle Post and Times and literary magazines like the Tatler and Spectator which began in this age greatly influenced the development of a serviceable prose style The poetry of the first half of the century as typified in Pope was polished unimaginative formal and the closed couplet was in general use supplanting all other forms of verse Both prose and poetry were too frequently satiric and satire does not tend to produce a high type of literature These tendencies were modified in the latter part of the century by the revival of romantic poetry marked by a strong reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom which in science and theology as well as in literature generally tend to fetter the free human spirit Birth of modern novel marked by story romance adventure individual life nature Three Tendencies 1 The tendency to realism in subject matter 2 The tendency to polish and refinement of expression 3 The prevalence of satire resulting from the unfortunate union of politics with literature Nearly every writer of the first half of the century was used and rewarded by Whigs or Tories for satirizing their enemies and for advancing their special political interests The satires of Pope Swift and Addison are doubtless the best in English I Classicism The classicists modeled after Greek and Roman authors Homer Virgil Horace and tried to control literary creation by some fixed laws and rules drawn from Greek and Roman works Rimed couplet instead of blank verse the three unities of time place and action regularity in construction and the presentation of types rather than individuals drama poetry should be lyric epic didactic satiric or dramatic prose should be precise direct and flexible II A The Enlightenment The 18th century England is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement and an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism which flourished in France and swept through the whole Western Europe at the time The movement was a further development of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas The enlighteners fought against class inequality stagnation prejudices and other survivals of feudalism They celebrated reason or rationality equality and science They held that rationality or reason should be the only the final cause of any human thought and activities At the same time the enlighteners advocated universal education They believed that human beings were limited dualistic imperfect and yet capable of rationality and perfection through education The representatives were Alexander Pope Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele Alexander Pope 1688 1744 Pope is in many respects a unique figure In the first place he was for a generation the poet of a great nation To be sure poetry was limited in the early 18th century there were few lyrics little or no love poetry no epics no dramas or songs of nature worth considering but in the narrow field of satiric and didactic verse Pope was the undisputed master His influence completely dominated the poetry of his age and many foreign writers as well as the majority of English poets looked to him as their model Second he was a remarkably clear and adequate reflection of the spirit of the age in which he lived There is hardly an ideal a belief a doubt a fashion a whim of Queen Anne s time that is not neatly expressed in his poetry Third he was the only important writer of that age who gave his whole life to letters Fourth by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place and held it in spite of religious prejudice and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man Pope had wide associations with literary men of his time Whig writers and Tories In 1714 he and his friends formed a club which was to cooperate in a scheme to satirize all sorts of false learning and pedantry in literature philosophy science and other branches of knowledge As a representative of the Enlightenment he was one of the first to introduce rationalism to England His works Three groups 1 In the early period he wrote Pastorals Windsor Forest Messiah Essay on Criticism Eloise to Abelard and the Rape of the Lock 2 In the middle his translations of Homer 3 In the last the Dunciad and the Epistles the latter containing the famous Essay on Man and the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot Essay on Criticism 744 lines 3 parts didactic in heroic couplets It sums up the art of poetry Aristotle Horace Boileau and some others of the 18th century European classicism The work made him famous in 1711 at 23 It is a storehouse of critical maxims For fools rush in where angels fear to tread To err is human to forgive divine A little learning is a dangerous thing The poet first laments the dearth of true taste in poetic criticism of his day and calls on people to turn to the Old Greek and Roman writers for guidance After a detailed account of the various problems in literary criticism he offers his own ideas and presents the classical rules At the end of the poem he also traces the history of literary criticism from Aristotle down to Boileau and Roscommon The poem as a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism exerted great influence upon Pope s contemporary writers in advocating the classical rules and popularizing the neoclassicist tradition in England Rape of the Lock is a masterpiece of its kind and a finest mock epic Pope was told to write something to restore peace but he chose to use mock epic form to ridicule the trivial incident and satirize the foolish meaningless life of the lords and ladies in the aristocratic bourgeois society of the 18th century England A fop at the court of Queen Anner one Lord Petre snipped a lock of hair from the abundant curls of a pretty maid of honor named Arabella Fermor The young lady resented it and the two families were plunged into a quarrel which was the talk of London All the mannerisms of society are pictured in minutest detail and satirized with the most delicate wit The story is based on an actual episode in which a lord did really cut a lock of hair from the head of a young lady thus breaking up the friendship between the two families The Dunciad generally considered Pope s best satiric work took him over 10 years for final completion Its satire is directed at Dullness in general and in the course of it all the literary men of the age poets mainly who had made Pope s enemies are held up to ridicule Dullness as reflected in the corruptness of government social morals education and even religion is expertly exposed and satirized The fame of Pope s Iliad which was financially the most successful of his books was due to the fact that he interpreted Homer in the elegant artificial language of his own age Not only do his words follow literary fashions but even the Homeric characters lose the strength and become fashionable men of the court Joseph Addison 1672 1719 Two things he did for English literature which are of inestimable value First he overcame a certain corrupt tendency bequeathed by Restoration literature It was the apparent aim of the low drama and even of much of the poetry of that age to make virtue ridiculous and vice attractive Addison set himself squarely against this tendency He tried to strip off the mask of vice to show its ugliness and deformity but to reveal virtue in its own native loveliness and he succeeded Second he seized upon the new social life of the clubs and made it the subject of endless pleasant essays upon types of men and manners The Tatler and The Spectator are the beginning of the modern essay and their studies of human character are a preparation for the modern novel His works The most enduring of Addison s works are his famous Essays collected from the Tatler and Spectator To an age of fundamental coarseness and artificiality he came with a wholesome message of refinement and simplicity He attacks all the little vanities and all the big vices of his time with a kindly ridicule and gentle humor which takes speedy improvement for granted Three other results 1 They are the best picture of the new social life of England with its many new interests 2 They advanced the art of literary criticism to a much higher stage than it had ever before reached and 3 They give us characters that live forever as part of that goodly company which extends from Chaucer s country parson to Kipling s Mulvaney He not only introduced the modern essay but they foretold the dawn of the modern novel In style these essays are remarkable as showing the growing perfection of the English language His poems are now seldom read His Cato with its classic unities and lack of dramatic power must be regarded as a failure but it offers an excellent example of the rhetoric and fine sentiment which were then considered the essentials of good writing God in Nature Traveler s Hymn Continued Help etc Richard Steel 1672 1729 He is the originator of the Tatler a paper three times a week and joins with Addison in creating the Spectator a daily paper the two periodicals which in the short space of less than four years did more to influence subsequent literature than all other magazines of the century combined The Tatler is a combination of news gossip and essay Not a club or a coffeehouse in London could afford to be without it and over its pages began the first general interest in contemporary English life as expressed in literature They won their place as the expression of the social life of a nation Samuel Johnson 1709 1784 He was a poet dramatist prose romancer biographer essayist critic lexicographer and publicist His two periodicals The Rambler 1750 52 and The Idler 1758 60 A Dictionary of the English Language 1755 as the first ambitious attempt at an English lexicon is extremely valuable notwithstanding the fact that his derivations are often faulty and that he frequently exercises his humor or prejudice in his curious definitions In defining oats for example as a grain given in England to horses and in Scotland to the people he indulges his prejudice against the Scotch whom he never understood He finished it in over 7 years Lives of the Poets 1779 1781 comments on 52 poets The Vanity of Human Wishes 1749 and London 1738 two satires in heroic couplet His only story The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia 1759 a romance is a matter of rhetoric rather than of romance but is interesting still to the reader who wants to hear Johnson s personal views of society philosophy and religion Several hundred essays Their contribution to the English literature 1 Their writings afford a new code of social morality for the rising bourgeoisie 2 They give a true picture of the social life of England in the 18th c 3 In their hands the English essay had completely established itself as a literary genre B Sentimentalism By the middle of the cent ury sentimentalism gradually made its appearance It came into being as the result of the bitter discontent among the enlightened people with social reality The sentimentalists while against feudalism sensed the contradictions in the process of capitalist development They appealed to sentiment Sentimentalism turned to the countryside for its material classicism confined itself to the clubs and drawing rooms and to social and political life of London Thomas Gray 1716 1771 Gray had a strong interest in the unknown fields of old Welsh and Norse literature and translated some into English He too was familiar with the works of the Greeks and some English poets such as Milton and Dryden He declined the Poet laureateship in 1757 and led the uneventful life of a scholar all his life Works His Letters published in 1775 are excellent reading and his Journal is still a model of natural description His poems in which we may trace the progress of Gray s emancipation from the classic rules are divided into three periods 1 Hymn to Adversity 1742 and Ode on the Spring 1742 and On a Distant Prospect of Eton College 1747 Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat 1748 They reveal two suggestive things The appearance of that melancholy which characterizes all the poetry of the period and the study of nature not for its own beauty or truth but rather as a suitable background for the play of human emotions 2 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 1751 his masterpiece established his fame as the leader of the sentimental poetry of the day The Bard 3 The Fatal Sisters 1761 and The Descent of Odin 1761 His poems are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life past and present They are characterized by an exquisite sense of form His style is sophisticated and allusive His poems are often marked with the trait of a highly artificial diction and a distorted word order Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is regarded as Gray s best and most representative work The poem is the outcome of about eight years careful composition and polish It is more or less connected with the melancholy event of the death of Richard West Gray s intimate friend In this poem Gray reflects on death the sorrows of life and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy The poet compares the common folk with the great ones wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance Here he reveals his sympathy for the poor and the unknown but mocks the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them The poem abounds in images and arouses sentiment in the bosom of every reader Though the use of artificial poetic diction and distorted word order make understanding of the poem somewhat difficult the artistic polish the sure control of language imagery rhythm and his subtle moderation of style and tone gives the poem a unique charm of its own The poem has been ranked among the best of the eighteenth century English poetry III The First English Novelists The chief literary phenomena of the complex eighteenth century are the reign of so called Classicism the Enlightenment Movement and Sentimentalism the revival of romantic poetry and the discovery of the modern novel Of these four the last is probably the most important The novel is the most important gift of bourgeois or capitalist civilization to the world s imaginative culture The modern European novel began after the Renaissance with Cervantes Don Quixote 1605 15 The modern English novel began two centuries later in the 18th century Meaning of the Novel The story element is essential to the novel Then readers have great interest in romances and adventures Gradually the element of adventure or surprising incident grows less and less important as we learn that true life is not adventurous but a plain heroic matter of work and duty and the daily choice between good and evil Life is the most real thing in the world now not the life of kings or heroes or superhuman creatures but the individual life with its struggles and temptations and triumphs or failures like our own and any work that faithfully represents life becomes interesting So we drop the adventure story and turn to the novel For the novel is a work of fiction in which the imagination and the intellect combine to express life in the form of a story and the imagination is always directed and controlled by the intellect It is interested chiefly not in romance or adventure but in men and women as they are it aims to show the motives and influences which govern human life and the effects of personal choice upon character and destiny The Discovery of the Modern Novel It is safe to say that until the publication of Richardson s Pamela in 1740 no true novel had appeared in any literature By a true novel we mean simply a work of fiction which relates the story of a plain human life under stress of emotion which depends for its interest not on incident or adventure but on its truth to nature Goldsmith Richardson Fielding Smollett and Sterne all seem to have seized upon the idea of reflecting life as it is in the form of a story and to have developed it simultaneously Samuel Richardson 1689 1761 Richardson wrote the first novel in modern sense Pamela or Virtue Rewarded published in 1740 It is sentimental grandiloquent and wearisome The story is told in a series of letters from the heroine Pamela Andrew Pamela is a young maid servant whose mistress died when the story begins The lady s son Mr B pursues her with obstinacy She refuses him leaves the house and is continuously pursued by B Finally B is compelled to come to terms and decides to marry her The second part describes Pamela s married life She suffers with dignity and sweetness the burden of a profligate husband Pamela was a new thing in 3 ways 1 It discarded the accomplishments of the former heroic romances and pictured the life and love of ordinary people 2 Its intention was to afford not merely entertainment but moral instruction 3 It described not only the sayings and doings of the characters but also their secret thoughts and feelings It was the first English psycho analytical novel Clarissa or The History of a Young La