Chapter 2
The Neoclassical Period
I. Historical, social and cultural background
1. Historically
It was an age full of conflicts
and divergence of values.
2. Socially
In society, it was against
prejudice, ignorance, inequality,
and any obstacles to the
realization of an individual’s full
intellectual and physical wellbeing.
3. Economically
Industrial Revolution
Overseas expansion
4. Politically
In politics, it was against tyranny;
Party politics became more significant
throughout the century, with Whigs
and Tories competing for power.
5. Ideologically
A progressive intellectual movement
Enlightenment Movement
6. Religiously
In religion, it was against
superstition, intolerance, and
dogmatism.
7.The impact of European
Neoclassicism on English
Neoclassicism
II. Literary history of the period
1. Literary trends
◆ Neoclassicism
---It found its artistic models in the classical literature of the
ancient Greek and Roman writers like Homer, Virgil, Horace,
Ovid.
---A partial reaction against the fires of passion blazed in the
late Renaissance, especially in the Metaphysical poetry.
---Prose should be precise, direct, smooth and flexible. Poetry
should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or dramatic, and each
class should be guided by its own principles.
---Neo-classical writers are: John Dryden, Alexander Pope,
Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Henry
Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edward Gibbon,
etc.
◆The Realistic Novel
---The English middle-class people were ready to
cast away the aristocratic romance and to create a
new and realistic literature of their own to express
their ideas and serve their interests.
--- The whole life in its ordinary aspects of the
middle class became the major source of interest
in literature.
◆ Gothic Novel
The English realistic novel as a literary genre flourished
in the middle decades of the 18th century. In the late
18th century it gradually gave way to Gothic novel,
which tells stories of horror, mystery and supernatural.
The setting is always in a Gothic building, the
atmosphere is expected to be dark, ghostly, full of
madness and superstition. These novels opened up to
the later detective novel and science fiction. Horace
Walpole’s Castle of Otranto started this type of novel.
Mathew. G. Lewis’s The Monk, Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein also belong to this type.
◆ Sentimentalism
---It was a partial reaction against that cold, logic
rationalism which dominated people’s life since the last
decades of the 17th century.
---A ready sympathy and an inward pain for the
misery of others became part of accepted social
morality and ethics.
---Sensibility also finds pleasure in the wildness of
nature, in the lawlessness of the exotic, and in the
sensational indulgence of fear and awe before the
mysterious or the inexplicable.
--- Thomas Gray’s “An Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard” (1750)
◆ Satire
Satire was another typical feature of this
period’s writing. It refers to any writing, in
poetry or prose, with the purpose to ridicule,
censure or to correct the vices, follies and
corruptions of society. The best
representatives are Pope and Swift, two
masters of Satire. The best and most
representative works are found in those
written by Pope and Swift.
2. Artistic features of English Enlightenment literature
◆ it is politicized and democratic;
◆ It contains a lot of new things, including the
material, the characters, the thoughts, and
they are often instructive;
◆The genres are various;
◆ Apart from that, the Enlightenment works
are mostly religious. And the description of
figures is not vivid or detailed enough.
3. Major figures of this period
In Neoclassical period, there emerged some
great enlighteners such as Alexander Pope ,
Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, Henry Fielding and
Samuel Johnson. Among them Daniel Defoe
and Henry Fielding were the representatives
of modern English novel, esp. Henry Fielding,
“Father of English novel ”. In the theatrical
world , Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the
leading figure among a host of playwrights.
III. Representatives of this period
Defoe, Daniel
• Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731),
English novelist and journalist,
whose work reflects his diverse
experiences in many countries
and in many walks of life.
Besides being a brilliant
journalist, novelist, and social
thinker, Defoe was a prolific
author, producing more than
500 books, pamphlets, and
tracts.

English author Daniel Defoe gained
international fame with his 1719 novel
Robinson Crusoe. He also published
several works of social criticism, one of
which, The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters (1702), landed him in jail. Defoe
produced more than 500 written works in
his lifetime.

Defoe's first and most famous novel, The
Life and Strange Surprising Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner,
appeared in 1719, when he was almost 60
years old. The book is commonly known as
Robinson Crusoe. A fictional tale of a
shipwrecked sailor, it was based on the
adventures of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk,
who had been marooned on one of the Juan
Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile.

The novel, full of detail about Crusoe's
ingenious attempts to overcome the
hardships of the island, has become one of
the classics of children's literature. More
novels followed, including Memoirs of a
Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720),
and The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll
Flanders (1722), the adventures of a London
prostitute, which is regarded as one of the
great English novels.
■Themes of Robinson Crusoe
The ambivalence of mastery;
The necessity of repentance;
The importance of self-awareness
■Artistic features
His stories are both credible and
fascinating.
His sentences are sometimes short, crisp
and plain, but sometimes long and rambling.
His language is smooth, easy, colloquial
and mostly vernacular.
Fielding, Henry
Fielding, Henry (17071754), English
novelist, playwright,
and barrister, who,
with his contemporary
Samuel Richardson,
established the
English novel tradition.

Fielding was born at Sharpham Park,
Somerset, and educated at Eton College
and in law at the Leiden University. From
1729 to 1737 he was a theatrical manager
and playwright in London. Of his 25 plays,
the most popular was The Coffee House
Politician (1730). In 1740 he was called to
the bar; as justice of the peace for
Westminster from 1748 and for Middlesex
from 1749, he worked hard to reduce crime
in London.
Tom Jones, the full title being The History of
Tom Jones, a Foundling , is generally
considered Fielding’s masterpiece.
Tom Jones is a good example of “comic epic
in prose”.
■ Themes of Tom Jones
Virtue as action rather than thought
The tension between Art and Artifice
■Artistic features
His style is easy, unlabored and familiar,
but extremely vivid and vigorous.
It is a combination of the grand with the
plain.
The sentences are always logical and
rhythmic.
The structures of his novel are always well
planned and often imitations of the classics.
IV. Study questions:
1. How could you define the term Enlightenment?
2. What is Neoclassicism in English literature?
3. What are the features of Defoe’s works?
4. What is the content of Robinson Crusoe?
5. What is the story about Tom Jones?