British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
CONTENTS
Background to Topics (1) to (3): The Middle Ages
(1) Anglo-Saxon England
- Anglo-Saxon Culture, Old English Poetry: St Augustine of Canterbury, the Venerable Bede, "Caedmon's Hymn",
"The Wanderer", "The Battle of Maldon", Beowulf, King Alfred the Great, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(2) Anglo-Norman England
- Celtic Legends: Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes
- Romance, Arthurian Legend, Legendary Histories: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon, the Gawain Poet,
Thomas Malory, William Langland
(3) Geoffrey Chaucer
Background to Topics (4) and (5): The Sixteenth Century
- Historical Chronology, Renaissance and Humanism, the Reformation, the English Bible, Court Culture, Literacy
and Writing, Tudor Style, the Elizabethan Theatre
(4) Edmund Spenser
(5) Tudor Literature
- John Skelton, Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Walter Ralegh, Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney,
Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd
Background to Topics (6) to (10): The First Half of the Seventeenth Century
- Historical Chronology, Politics and Religion, Philosophy and Science, Literature Promoters, Literature Writers
(6) William Shakespeare
(7) Jacobean Literature
- Ben Jonson, John Webster, John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Middleton, George Chapman
(8) Metaphysical Poets
- John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, Andrew Marvell, John Suckling, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry
Vaughan
(9) John Milton
(10) Seventeenth-Century Philosophy and Science
- New Genres: Autobiography and Biography, Essay and Treatise
- Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Browne, John Locke, Isaac Newton
Background to Topics (11) to (20): General Background to Literature between 1660 and 1790
- Historical Chronology, Society and Philosophy, Literature
(11) Restoration Drama
- Comedy: George Etherege, William Wycherley, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh, William Congreve, George
Farquhar
- Tragedy: Nahum Tate, John Dryden, Thomas Otway, William Congreve
(12) Restoration Poetry and Prose
- Poetry: John Dryden, John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester)
- Autobiography: Margaret Cavendish, Samuel Pepys, John Bunyan
- Satire: Samuel Butler
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
Background to Topics (13) to (15): The First Half of the Eighteenth Century
- Satire, Prose, Drama, Poetry
(13) Daniel Defoe
(14) Jonathan Swift
(15) Alexander Pope
Background to Topics (16) to (20): The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
- Poetry, Prose, the Novel
(16) Eighteenth-Century Prose
- the Periodical Essay: Richard Steele, Joseph Addison
- the Novel: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Tobias Smollett, Oliver Goldsmith
(17) Eighteenth-Century Drama
- Sentimental Comedy: Richard Steele, Joseph Addison
- Satirical Comedy: John Gay, Henry Fielding
- Comedy of Manners: Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(18) Eighteenth-Century Poetry
- Satirical Poetry: John Gay
- the Graveyard School: Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith
- the Medieval Revival: Thomas Percy, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton
- Personal Poetry: James Thomson, William Cowper, George Crabbe
(19) Samuel Johnson
(20) Late Eighteenth-Century Novel
- Sense and Sentiment: Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney
- Gothicism: Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Mary Shelley(1 - 3)
BACKGROUND TO THE MIDDLE AGES
CHRONOLOGY
Prehistory:
The Iberians, the Picts; the creation of the Stonehenge
th
5 century B.C.:
The Celts, the Gauls; evidence in the language: e.g. bog, glen, and many proper nouns;
the origin of the Arthurian legend
43 - c. 420 A.D.:
Roman invasion and occupation of Britain
c. 450:
Anglo-Saxon Conquest, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians; evidence in the
language: Essex, Sussex and Wessex, occupied by the East, South, and West Saxons
597:
St Augustine arrives to Kent; beginning of Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity
871 - 899:
Reign of King Alfred the Great
1066:
Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings
1360 - 1400:
Geoffrey Chaucer; Piers Plowman; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1485:
William Caxton's printing of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur, one of the first
books printed in England
PERIOD CHARACTERISTICS
- the Middle Ages = the time span from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance
- the date 1485 = the year of the accession of Henry VII and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, used to mark the
end of the Middle Ages for convenience
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
(1) Anglo-Saxon England (c. 450 - 1066)
- language: Old English, in this period clearly displays the kinship to other Germanic languages
- literature: shares a body of heroic as well as Christian legends with other Germanic literatures
- texts: Beowulf, "The Wanderer"
(2) Anglo-Norman England (1066 - c. end of the 13th century)
- language: the French of the ruling class, remains in loan words in the English vocabulary
- literature: fascination with the legendary hero Arthur, originating in Celtic literature
(3) Middle English Literature in the 14th and 15th Centuries
- language: Middle English, gradual displacement of French by English
- literature: emergence of the awareness and pride in a uniquely English literature, a new sense of English as
literary medium able to compete with French and Latin
- texts: Geoffrey Chaucer; Piers Plowman; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1) ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
- Britannia = the name derived from the Celtic-speaking inhabitants, the Britons; used when England was a
province of the Roman Empire from the 1st to the 5th century
- England = derived from the invading Germanic tribe of the Angles
ANGLO-SAXON CULTURE
- based on the aristocratic heroic and kinship values, emphasizes especially the uncle-nephew relationship
- the tribe is ruled by a chieftain called king, the lord surrounds himself with a band of retainers, often his kins
- the faithfulness of the warriors is rewarded by royal generosity, the good king is called a ring-giver
- the king sets an example which his men are to follow
- life is harsh, men are said to be cheerful in the mead hall, but even there they think of struggle in war
- blood vengeance is a sacred duty
- Romantic love does not exist yet, women are paid no attention
OLD ENGLISH POETRY
- the Anglo-Saxon invaders brought a tradition of oral poetry performed in alliterative verse by a scop, i.e. bard
- poetry is moulded by the inherent conflict between the heroic code and the Christian religion
- much of the Christian poetry is also cast in the heroic mode: "The Dream of the Rood" or "Caedmon's Hymn"
- the poetic diction consists of formulaic phrases and repetitions of parallel syntactic structures
- uses synecdoche (keel for ship), metonymy (iron for sword) and kenning, i.e. a compound of two words in place
of another which creates a condensed metaphor (life-house for body)
- uses parallel and appositive expressions known as variation (God as holy Creator, Master Almighty etc.)
- also uses irony and litotes, i.e. ironic understatement (battle-play for fighting)
ST AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY (d. 604)
- a Benedictine monk sent by the Pope as a missionary to the King of Kent
- spread Christianity, which also had a positive impact on the rise of literacy, first only in monasteries
THE VENERABLE BEDE (c. 673 - 735)
- a Christian churchman writing in Latin
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731):
- records the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the vicissitudes of the petty kingdoms that comprised England at the time
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- focuses on the conversion, the spread of Christianity and the growth of the English church
- contains many stories of saints and miracles to testify to the glory of God
- includes "Caedmon's Hymn", the earliest extant Old English poem, and the only biographical information about
any Old English poet
"CAEDMON'S HYMN" (composed between 658 - 680)
- written by Caedmon, supposedly an illiterate herder, who miraculously received the gift of song in a dream
- Caedmon entered the monastery and founded a school of Christian poetry
- the poem is the oldest oral tradition poem or song in Old English composed in England
"THE WANDERER" (preserved in a manuscript from c. 975)
- an Old English elegiac lament, written by an unknown poet
- follows the wandering on a sea of a lonely warrior who had lost his lord, his companions in arms and a mead hall
- expands the theme from one man's search for a new lord to all human beings in a world wasted by war and time
- employs pathetic fallacy: nature seems to conspire to match the man's mood (the season is winter)
- concludes with a characteristic Old English injunction to practice restraint on earth and place hope only in heaven
"THE BATTLE OF MALDON" (c. 1000)
- the last Old English heroic poem, written by an unknown poet
- inspired by the battle between the English and the Danish invaders near Maldon, Essex, in 991
- ended with the victory of the Vikings
- elaborates on the code of honour obliging the warrior to avenge his slain lord or to die in the attempt
BEOWULF (composed in c. 8th century, preserved in a 10th century manuscript)
- a long elegiac Old English epic reviving the heroic language, style and pagan world of ancient Germanic tribes
- written in the tradition of oral poetry in alliterative verse: uses words and formulaic expressions typically found
also in other Old English poems, but also uses unique words that are recorded only once in a language
- presumably written by a single Christian poet: alludes to God (the monster Grendel is said to be a descendant of
Cain), does not refer to pagan deities with the single exception of Wyrd, or Weird, the goddess of fate
- elaborates on the then most important relationships: that of the warrior, or thane, and his lord, and that of kinsmen
- concerned with two Scandinavian tribes, the Danes with king Hrothgar and the Geats with king Hygelac, set in
the middle of the 5th century
- Beowulf, the warrior of the Geats, kills the supernatural monster Grendel and Grendel's mother to save the Danes
and to exact revenge on behalf of Hrothgar, but also to demonstrate his strength and to enhance his personal glory
- later, as an old king, Beowulf fights against the dragon to save his own people, but is killed
- might be viewed as the poet's lament for heroes like Beowulf who went into the darkness without the light of his
own Christian faith
KING ALFRED THE GREAT (life 849 - 899, reign 871 - 899)
- initiated the beginning of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE (started in 891)
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- a historical record written in Old English
- takes the form of annals, i.e. an annual summary of important events in England
- copies of the original were later distributed to centres of learning and then carried on independently
- written by monks, that is devotes much space to church politics(2) ANGLO-NORMAN ENGLAND
- Normans = the name is a contraction from Norsemen, the people were descendants of Germanic adventurers who
occupied much of northern France in the 10th century
- Normans adopted the French language of the land they had settled in as well as its Christian religion
- parallelly existing languages: Latin as the language of learning, French of the Norman aristocracy, Middle English
of the natives, and different branches of the Celtic language group
CELTIC LEGENDS
- Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes both claimed to have obtained their narratives from Breton storytellers
- the former speaks respectfully of the storytellers, the latter accuses them of marring their material which he had to
weave in a more elegant fusion of form and meaning
- both were 12th century authors writing in French and using romances as a means of exploring psychological and
ethical dilemmas and the individual's relation to society
MARIE DE FRANCE (12th century)
- an unidentified author, her signature means only that her given name was Marie and that she was born in France
- author of a series of short romances, e.g. "Lanval"
- a representative of the Breton lay, i.e. the genre of native tales originally performed orally by Breton bards, the
word lay refers to a short verse narrative
Lais:
- a collection of twelve short verse romances, each of them dealing with a single event in the affairs of noble lovers
- portrays various kinds of relationships, both favourably and unfavourably, with both happy and tragic resolutions
- "Lanval": a romance of a mortal lover and a fairy bride, exceptional in the way it criticizes feudal society
Fables:
- traditional fables making animals stand for types of human characters
St Patrick's Purgatory:
- a translation from Latin of a contemporary monastic poem about a knight's descent to the underworld
- the title refers to the entrance to the underworld supposedly first found by St Patrick
CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES (12th century)
- the principal creator of the romance of chivalry and courtly love
Ywain and Gawain (c. 1400):
- a Middle English romance, a cruder version of Chrétien's original French romance called The Knight and the Lion
ROMANCE
- roman = the word was originally applied in French to a work written in the French vernacular
- romance = eventually acquired the meaning of a story dealing with chivalric adventures and courtly love
- the knight, obliged to obey the gentlemanly code of behaviour, sets off for a quest, often involving the saving of a
damsel in distress threatened by monsters, dragons or vicious knights
- the romance contrasts with the previous period (love to a lady was not a subject of Anglo-Saxon literature),
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
started a revolution in thinking about love and today influences our ways of thinking and perceiving
< initiated by the Troubadour poets in Italy and Southern France in 13th and 14th centuries
< Dante's idealisation of love to Beatrice in La Vita Nuova (The New Life, 1283 - 1293)
< also influenced by the worship of Virgin Mary
< might have been influenced by the misunderstanding of the wit and irony in The Remedy of Love, originally by
Ovid, then a tale by Chaucer
C. S. Lewis's The Allegory of Love (1936):
- defines the attributes of courtly love
- humility: in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon period and works in Old English
- courtesy: the chivalric code of behaviour, formulas in the way of speaking and behaving
- adultery: illegitimate love affairs were results of pre-arranged marries in upper-classes, also the Crusades left
young men free to woo the ladies in the castles (e.g. the love stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde)
- religion of love: compares love to religious experience, both are capable of transforming people
ARTHURIAN LEGEND
- characters: King Arthur; Arthur's wife Guinevere; the magician Merlin; Arthur's evil half-sister Morgana le Fay;
Arthur's best knight Lancelot; Arthur's nephew Mordred
- attributes: Excalibur (the sword in the stone); the Round Table (designed to make all the seated knights equal); the
quest for the Holy Grail (the cup used to caught Christ's blood, then used by Apostles); the capital city Camelot; the
heavenly city Avalon (to which Arthur retires after his death)
- the myth of Arthur's return: a recurrent myth of the hero being not really dead but asleep somewhere to return to
save his people when needed
- later renderings: Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1856 - 1885), Terence Hanbury White's The Once and
Future King (1958), Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) etc.
LEGENDARY HISTORIES
- told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and Layamon in Latin, French and Middle English respectively
- begin with a foundation myth, a heroic account of national origins modelled on Virgil's Aeneid (in Virgil's epic
Rome is founded by refugees from the fall of Troy; in British legends another band of refugees establishes Britain)
- end with the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the native Britons
- fascinated with the prestige and power of ancient Rome
- the figure of King Arthur, who had defeated Rome itself, flattered the ambitions of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy
- at the same time the destruction of Arthur's kingdom served as a lesson of the consequences of civil wars
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH (c. 1100 - 1155)
- a churchman, probably of Welsh or Breton ancestry
History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1130 - 1138):
- the author claimed it to be a translation into Latin from an ancient Welsh book
- devotes most space to the birth and reign of King Arthur who drives out the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders, defeats
the Roman armies, faces the treachery of his nephew Mordred, but finally fails to preserve his kingdom
- includes many other legendary and historical characters, also e.g. is the first to tell of King Lear and his daughters
WACE (c. 1110 - c. 1180)
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- a churchman of Norman origin
Le Roman de Brut (1155):
- freely transformed the Arthurian legend of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History into French rhymed verse
- named after Brut, a great-grandson of Aeneas, the leader of the Trojan refugees who supposedly founded Britain
- created the atmosphere of courtliness by describing dress, speech and behaviour of the characters; also e.g. is the
first to mention the Round Table
LAYAMON (12th century)
- an English churchman
Brut (c. 1190):
- transformed Wace's Le Roman de Brut into a much longer poem in Middle English
- uses both alliteration and rhyme
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (c. 1375 - 1400)
- the finest compact Arthurian romance in Middle English, presented as on oral poem
- by an unknown author, the Gawain Poet, who also wrote allegorical religious poems Pearl, Patience, and Purity
- in Northwest Midlands dialect (e.g. Chaucer in contrast used East Midlands dialect)
- shows high sophistication and knowledge of the international Middle Ages culture as well as of the ancient native
traditions
- draws on an older tradition of the Arthurian legend: makes Sir Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, the preeminent
knight of the Round Table, while Lancelot remains just one of the other knights
- the later 13th century French Arthurian legend presents Sir Lancelot as the best knight and makes Lancelot's
adultery with Queen Guinevere the central event (e.g. in Sir Thomas Malory)
- the main plot focuses on the Beheading Game, in which a supernatural challenger offers to let his head be cut off
in exchange for a return blow (the theme derives from a Middle Irish tale)
- the first and the last stanzas refer to the Brutus Books, the foundation stories tracing the origins of Rome and
Britain back to the destruction of Troy
- belongs to the Alliterative Revival of the late 14th century (together with e.g. Piers Plowman and The Alliterative
Morte D'Arthur)
- written in stanzas containing a group of alliterative lines, each stanza closes with five short lines rhyming ababa:
the first line, the bob, consists of two or three syllables, the following four lines, the wheel, consist of three stresses
each
SIR THOMAS MALORY (c. 1405 - 1471)
- the author was identified as a violent criminal who wrote his legends in prison
Morte D'Arthur (Death of Arthur):
- the title was chosen by William Caxton, the first English printer
- draws on various 13th century prose romances in French and transforms them into a continuous narrative
- begins with Arthur's birth (the illegitimate son of the Uther Pendragon and the wife of one of Uther's barons,
conceived when Uther disguised himself as the husband of the lady in question), ends with the destruction of the
Round Table and the deaths of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot
- focuses on King Arthur, but describes in detail also the separate adventures of the knights of the Round Table
- portrays Lancelot's fatal liaison with Guinevere and consequently his torn loyalties between his lord and his lady
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- manifests masterly use of a terse and direct prose style, ironic understatement and naturalistic dialogue
- expresses nostalgia for an ideal past that never truly existed and a sense of the irretrievability of past glory
WILLIAM LANGLAND (c. 1330 - 1387)
- presumably educated to enter the church but his marriage and lack of preferment reduced him to poverty
The Vision of Piers Plowman (composed 1360s - 1380s):
- a long religious allegory in alliterative verse, surviving in three distinct versions referred to as A-, B- and C-texts
- takes the common medieval form of a dream vision, which was then supposed to be revealing a disguised truth
- the dreamer is a humble commoner on a tough-minded, persistent and passionate search for answers in religion
- the theme is the history of Christianity as it unfolds both in the Bible and in the life of an individual Christian
- includes an indignant satire of the corruption of the church and ecclesiastics as well as the wealthy laity which
fails to relieve the suffering of the poor(3) GEOFFREY CHAUCER (C. 1343 - 1400)
MEDIEVAL SOCIETY STRATIFICATION
- medieval society was made up of three estates:
> the nobility, a small hereditary aristocracy, whose mission on earth was to rule over and defend the body politic
> the church, whose duty was to look after the spiritual welfare of that body
> the commoners, a large mass, who was supposed to do the work that provided for its physical needs
- in Chaucer's time a growing and prosperous middle class was beginning to play an increasingly important role,
blurring the traditional class boundaries
CHAUCER'S SOCIAL BACKGROUND
- born into the middle class, as a son of a prosperous wine merchant, but became associated with the upper class
- as a youth served as a page, a personal attendant, in aristocratic households, eventually became an esquire (the
nearest equivalent of a gentleman and the highest position a person not born into aristocracy could then achieve)
- captured by the French and ransomed during the Hundred Years War
- took a series of administrative posts: a diplomat, a controller of customs, a clerk of the king's works responsible
for the maintenance of royal residences, parks and other holdings
- acquainted with the ruling nobility, including John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and his father King Edward
> towards the end of his life addressed a comic "Complaint to His Purse" to John Gaunt's son, King Henry IV, as
a reminder that the treasury owed him his annuity
- at the intersection of the social worlds of the middle class and the upper class, he was able to view with both
sympathy and humour the behaviours, beliefs and pretensions of the diverse people comprising the levels of society
FRENCH INFLUENCE
- started writing poems in French, the fashionable language of the English aristocracy and the language of literature
- wrote lyrics and verse narratives about courtly love, often presented in the form a dream
< drew on The Romance of the Rose, a 13th century long dream allegory in which the dreamer suffers many trials
for the love of a symbolic rosebud
LATIN INFLUENCE
- throughout his life wrote and translated moral and religious works from French, Italian and Latin
> Consolation of Philosophy: a prose translation from a Latin work by the 6th century Roman statesman Boethius
written while he was in prison awaiting execution for crimes he never committed
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- provides inspiration and comfort through its lesson that worldly fortune is deceitful and through the platonic
doctrine that the body itself is only a prison house for the soul aspiring to eternal things
ITALIAN INFLUENCE
- one of his diplomatic missions brought him into direct contact with the Italian Renaissance, acquainted himself
with the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio
> inspired him to write The House of Fame, a dream vision of the poet's journey in the talons of a gigantic eagle to
the palace of the goddess Fame, at many points an affectionate parody of Dante's journey in the Divine Comedy
> The Parliament of Fowls, a dream vision in which all the birds meet on St Valentine's Day to choose their mates,
a humorous depiction of the ways different classes in human society think and talk about love
> though not acknowledged, Boccaccio served as a basis for "The Knight's Tale" and Troilus and Criseyde (c.
1385), his longest complete poem telling the story of how the Trojan Prince Troilus loved and finally lost Criseyde
to the Greek warrior Diomede
THE CANTERBURY TALES (WRITTEN 1386 - 1400)
> FRAMING DEVICES:
- originally conceived as a series of 120 tales x but: completed 22 tales, began 2 others
- the total number of pilgrims is 30 plus the inn keeper and the organizer of the contest, Harry Bailey, each of the
pilgrims should have told two stories on their way to Canterbury and two more on their way back
- Chaucer includes himself as one of the characters, an innocent, naive and gullible pilgrim, whose story is the most
boring, is the only to be interrupted but also the only to tell two stories
- the title: the Canterbury Cathedral was a favourite pilgrimage site, the site of murder of archbishop Thomas
Becket, a famous English saint and martyr (murdered 1170) who was believed to have healing powers
- uses a fictitious pilgrimage as the framing device for a number of stories
- collections of tales linked in such a way were common in the later Middle Ages (e.g. Boccaccio's Decameron
with 10 narrators telling 10 tales within 10 days)
x unlike in Boccaccio, who uses upper-class characters fleeing from black plague, Chaucer presents middle-class
characters with a wide spectrum of occupations
- the variety of tellers is matched by the diversity of their tales: the stories contrast in genre, style, tone and values
- some of the stories are linked by the interchanges among the pilgrims who react to the tale and sometimes quarrel,
several narrators' stories also respond to topics taken up by previous tellers
> MEANS OF SATIRE:
- Chaucer's character types continue the tradition discernible throughout medieval literature, esp. in estates satire
- like estates satire exposes typical examples of corruption at all levels of society: e.g. the flattering Friar: practices
the typical little vanities and larger vices for which such ecclesiastics are conventionally attacked
x unlike estates satire avoids moral judgement, seems even to express admiration of the characters' skills
- most harshly presents the clerical characters, like his contemporary John Wycliffe (1320s - 1384) criticizes the
Roman Catholic church, especially the selling of pardons and other practices
- uses carefully selected details to give an integrated sketch of the person being described
- the accumulation of detail (facial features, clothes, favourite foods and drink of the characters etc.) is expressive
of the characters' social rank x but: also of their moral and spiritual condition
=> collectively, the characters represent the condition of late-medieval society
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
> GENRES:
- romance, on courtly love of upper-class characters: the story of unrequited love in "The Knight's Tale"
- fabliaux, in contrast to romance concerned with lower-class characters and cuckoldry: "The Miller's Tale"
- fable, with animals representing vices and virtues of human beings: "The Nun Priest's Tale"
- fairy tale, featuring fairies or other supernatural beings: "The Woman of Bath's Tale"
- sermon, a religious genre: "The Pardoner's Tale"
> CHARACTERS:
- follows the theory of the four humours:
> sanguine: hot and moist; characterized by blood and the element of air; associated with the spring (e.g. the
'pleasantly plump' Franklin)
> choleric: hot and dry; characterized by yellow bile and fire; associated with the summer
> melancholic: cold and dry; characterized by black bile and earth; associated with the autumn
> phlegmatic: cold and moist; characterized by phlegm and water; associated with the winter
- complies to the idea that the physiognomy of a person reflects this person's character and that deformities of body
are a punishment for one's sins
> gap between teeth, curly hair: suggest sensuousness and lustiness
> red hair: suggest its bearer is not to be trusted
> grey eyes: represent the medieval ideal of female beauty
> THE TALES:
> "General Prologue"
> "The Knight's Tale"
> "The Miller's Tale"
> "The Reeve's Tale"
> "The Cook's Tale"
> "The Man of Law's Tale"
> "The Wife of Bath's Tale"
> "The Friar's Tale"
> "The Summoner's Tale"
> "The Clerk's Tale"
> "The Merchant's Tale"
> "The Squire's Tale"
> "The Franklin's Tale"
> "The Physician's Tale"
> "The Pardoner's Tale"
> "The Shipman's Tale"
> "The Prioress's Tale"
> "The Tale of Sir Thopas"
> "The Tale of Melibee"
> "The Monk's Tale"
> "The Nun Priest's Tale"
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
> "The Second Nun's Tale"
> "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale"
> "The Manciple's Tale"
> "The Parson's Tale"(4 - 5) BACKGROUND TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (1485 - 1603)
CHRONOLOGY
1455 - 85: Wars of the Roses, struggle for royal power between the noble houses of York and Lancaster
1485:
Accession of Henry VII, beginning of Tudor dynasty
1509:
Accession of Henry VIII
1517:
Martin Luther's Wittenberg Theses; beginning of the Reformation
1534:
Henry VIII declares himself head of the English church, beginning of Protestantism
1547:
Accession of Protestant Edward VI, reign under the Regency Council because of the king's young age
1553:
Accession of Catholic Mary I, nicknamed Bloody Mary for her persecution of Protestants
1558:
Accession of Protestant Elizabeth I
1576:
Building of The Theatre, the first permanent structure in England for the presentation of plays
1587:
Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, for treason
1588:
Defeat of the Catholic Spanish Armada
1599:
Opening of the Globe Theatre
1603:
Accession of James I, beginning of Stuart dynasty
RENAISSANCE AND HUMANISM
- Renaissance originated in Italy first as a movement in the visual arts and architecture
- in England the movement was manifested rather in the spiritual and intellectual orientation known as humanism
- introduced new aesthetic norms based on classical models
- emphasized interest in education, based on the study of the Latin language and classic Greek and Roman literature
- established contrary impulses: humanist reverence for the classics and English pride in the vernacular language
> produced notable translations, e.g. George Chapman's translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
THE REFORMATION
- originally the only official religion was Roman Catholicism with a vast system of confession, pardons, penance,
absolution, indulgences, sacred relics and ceremonies
- 14th century: John Wycliffe and his followers, known as Lollards, challenged some of the doctrines and practices
of the Catholic church, but were suppressed
- 1517: Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, charged
the pope and his hierarchy for being the servants of Satan and urged for direct access to God by means of
vernacular translations of the Bible
- John Calvin, a French theologian in Geneva, formulates the principles of Calvinism, putting emphasis on the
doctrine of predestination, i.e. the idea that God has elected a small number of believers for salvation, while the
others are already by birth doomed for damnation
- 1534: Henry VIII craves a legitimate male heir to the throne, seeks divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to
marry Anne Boleyn, on the pope's refusal to grant him divorce declares himself the head of the English church
- England shifts from Protestantism under Henry VIII and Edward VI, through Catholicism under Mary I, again to
Protestantism under Elizabeth I
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
THE ENGLISH BIBLE
- Protestantism required direct access to the Bible for laity in vernacular translations, Roman Catholicism preferred
that the populace encounter the Scriptures through the interpretations of the priests
> Tyndale's Translation (Protestant): a translation of the New Testament by the English Lutheran William Tyndale,
printed on the Continent and smuggled into England in 1525
> The Great Bible (Protestant): based on the former version, with addition of the Hebrew Bible began by W.
Tyndale and finished by his associate Miles Coverdale, becomes the first authorized version in English in 1539
> The Geneva Bible (Protestant): translated and extended with scholarly marginal notes by a group of English
Protestant exiles in Calvin's Geneva during the reign of Mary I
> The Douay-Rheims Version (Catholic): a reaction to the former, a translation with marginal notes by English
Catholic exiles during the reign of Elizabeth I
> King James Bible, also as The Authorized Version (Protestant): a revised translation undertaken by a group of
almost fifty scholars during the reign of James I
COURT CULTURE
- the court executed central authority, it was the centre of power as well as culture
- court fashions in dress and speech and tastes in painting, music and poetry shaped the taste of the whole country
- culture characteristic by ostentatiousness, wearing of costly costumes and display of artistic and social skills
- involved intrigue, secrecy and spying employed to get in closest possible proximity to the monarch
> many poets were courtiers and vice versa, e.g. Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, etc.
LITERACY AND WRITING
- 1485: William Caxton introduces the printing press into England, printing makes books cheaper, literacy spreads
- at the beginning of the 16th century the English language had no prestige, the language of literacy was Latin
> e.g. Thomas More's Utopia (1516) is written in Latin for an international intellectual community
- by the end of the 16th century a succession of brilliant writers has established English linguistic self-confidence
> e.g. Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, the translators of the Bible
- there was no author's copyright, no royalties paid to an author, no freedom of the press
- financial rewards for writing derived mostly on gifts from wealthy patrons, authors wrote to flatter their patrons
and to comply with the official censorship
TUDOR STYLE
- Renaissance literature is the product of a rhetorical culture indulging in verbal self-display
- makes heavy use of figures, i.e. certain fixed syntactic forms and word patterns
- relies on the 16th century looser, more flexible syntax, and less systemic punctuation
- admires elaborate ornament in language as well as in clothing, jewellery, furniture etc.
- creates complicated, intricate but perfectly regular design in poetry as well as in music, gardens, architecture, etc.
- writing style was also formed by the flourishing vocal music, both madrigals (unaccompanied songs for two to
eight voices) and airs (songs for solo voice accompanied by the lute)
- many 16th century poems were written to be set to musics, others aspire with their melody to the musical quality
- both poetry and prose reproduce the sense of wonder, as if the world were seen clearly for the first time
- sometimes this magical power of poetry was identified with its moral power, as in the major work of literary
criticism of the period, P. Sidney's The Defence of Poesy (1595)
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British Literature III (700 - 1790) --- Mgr. David Livingstone, Mgr. Ema Jelínková, Ph.D.
- authors wrote in one of the conventional modes: pastoral, heroic, lyric, satiric, elegiac, tragic, and comic
> the pastoral mode celebrates leisure, humility, and contentment, exalts the simply country life over the city: used
with various genres, e.g. C. Marlowe's pastoral poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1590s)
> the heroic mode glorifies a nation or people, typically in the form of a long exalted poem based on a heroic story
from the nation's distant past: chiefly used with the genre of the epic, e.g. E. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590)
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE
- since late Middle Ages there was a rich theatrical tradition of annual festivals held in several towns in England
- theatrical companies organized actors and travelled the country under noble patronage
> mystery plays: depicted biblical stories, represented the mysteries of the faith of the Catholic church
> interludes: short staged dialogues on religious, moral, and political themes
> morality plays: allegories of spiritual struggle, typically featuring a person named Human or Mankind faced with
a choice between a pious life in the company of e.g. Good Deeds and a dissolute life in the company of Mischief
- Elizabethan plays abandoned the classical rules, did not follow the unities of time, place, and action, and even
featured villains as protagonists (e.g. Shakespeare's Macbeth)
- also frequently incorporated music and dance into plays
> revenge tragedy: an influential subgenre of the tragedy, featuring a wronged protagonist plotting and executing a
revenge and destroying himself in the process (e.g. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy)
> history play: both tragedies and comedies, picturing the great conspiracies, rebellions, and wars of the nation
(e.g. Shakespeare's Richard III)
> romantic comedy: follows noble characters in a plot in which love triumphs over potentially tragic obstacles
(e.g. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night)
> city comedy: typically treats bourgeois characters in a London setting with a satirical streak (e.g. Thomas
Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside)
> humour comedy: uses characters types created on the medical theory that the predominance of a particular fluid,
or humour, in the body creates a specific temperament, e.g. melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric (e.g.
Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour)(4) EDMUND SPENSER (1552 - 1599)
LIFE AND CAREER
- unlike his contemporary courtier poets Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, or Sir Walter Raleigh was born to
parents of modest means and status, nonetheless received an impressive university education
- in his youth influenced by Puritanism (radical Protestantism), remained Protestant all his life, and portrayed the
Roman Catholic church as a demonic villain in The Faerie Queene
- failed to obtain an office in England, spent the latter part of his life in Ireland, holding various minor government
posts and hence participating actively in the English struggle against Irish rebels
> A View of the Present Sate of Ireland (posthumously, 1633): originally an anonymously published apology for
the repressive English regime, proclaims the superiority of modern English government over the older patterns of
Irish clan loyalty
- the publication of The Faerie Queene won him the queen's favour and patronage, on which he shortly revisited
London, but eventually returned to Ireland
> Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595): a comment on his visit to the court, an allegorical pastoral celebrating
the shepherdess Cynthia (identified with the Queen), but allowing for inconsistencies of the court he abandoned
- during an uprising in Munster in 1598 Irish rebels burnt down his house and forced him to flee to England, where
he died shortly afterwards
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POETIC STYLE
- experiments with forms, metres, and rhyme schemes:
> introduces a novel form with a special rhyme scheme, the Spenserian sonnet, i.e. three quatrains and a couplet
rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee, in Amoretti
> invents the Spenserian stanza, a nine-line stanza of closely interlocking rhymes ababbcbcc, the first five lines in
iambic pentameter and the sixth line in iambic hexameter or alexandrine, introduced in The Faerie Queene
> adapts the Italian canzone forms in Epithalamion and Prothalamion
- uses idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation, spells words variably so as to suggest eye rhymes or etymologies
(though often incorrect ones)
- defies classification into neat categories: celebrates physical beauty, yet also analyses the aspects of good and
evil; creates sensuous images, but is suspicious of the power of images to turn into idols; admires courtesy,
gentleness, and moral refinement, but also celebrates English nationalism, empire, and martial power
> as an epic poet-prophet greatly influenced e.g. John Milton and the later generation of Romantics
MAJOR WORKS
> The Shepheardes Calender (1579):
- follows the influential classical form of pastoral poetry, practised e.g. by the Alexandrian poet Theocritus ( 3rd
century BC) and the Roman poet Virgil (1st century BC), based on the idea of shepherds living in harmony with
nature, piping on their flutes and singing songs among their herds
- contains twelve eclogues titled for the months of the year, each prefaced by an illustrative woodcut representing
the characters or theme of the poem and picturing the appropriate sign of the zodiac for the month
- dedicated to his friend P. Sidney, who however disapproved of its poetic style
- uses a deliberately archaic language, partly in homage to his favourite Chaucer, partly to achieve the rustic effect
- attempts to conjure a native English style which could be wed to the classical mode of the pastoral
- experiments with metre: uses thirteen different metres, some of them invented, some adapted, most of them novel
> The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596):
- in 1590 published the first three books, in 1596 changed the ending of Book 3 to provide a bridge for the next
three books, the fragment of a seventh book known as "Mutabilitie Cantos" was published posthumously
- originally conceived as a vast poem in twelve books, each of them describing several adventures undertaken by
knights and knightly dames in honour of the twelve days of the annual feast of Gloriana (identified with the Queen)
- dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I who serves as the the ultimate focus of each of the knightly quests and whose
qualities inspire the complex exposition of moral virtue pursued as the poem develops towards its intended climax
- Elizabeth features in the poem under various names, including queen Gloriana, the female knight Britomart, etc.
- legitimises the modern political settlement by claiming the British to be descents of Trojans, according to the
legend that Britain was established by Brutus, the leader of a group of refugees from the fall of Troy
- follows the ancient epic tradition of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and later Italian examples of
chivalry revived in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Orlando Mad, 1532) and Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem
Delivered, 1581)
- also acknowledges the influence of Chaucer, makes direct reference to Chaucer's allegory The Parlement of
Foules in Book VI, and derives his description of forest trees in Book I from the same poem
- explains the 'darke conceit' of the poem in the prefatory letter addressed to W. Raleigh, hints at some of the
allegorical constructions existing parallelly to the literary meaning: historical, moral, mystical, socio-political, etc.
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- the characters and adventures in each of the books enact or embody particular virtues and vices, together the
individual positive moral qualities constitute an ideal human being
> in Book I, the Redcrosse Knight is the knight of Holiness; in Book II, Sir Guyon is the knight of Temperance;
and in Book III, the female knight Britomart is the knight of Chastity, i.e. chaste love leading to marriage
> the heroes in the following three books represent Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy respectively; the seventh book
would have dealt with Constancy
- the confident optimism of the first three books contrasts to the increasing sense of things falling apart in the
second three books, the unfinished seventh book challenges the timelessness of Gloriana's rule by the force of
inexorable change
> Amoretti (1595):
- a series of love sonnets readjusting the Petrarchan model by seeing the mistress not as an unattainable object of
perfection, but as a creature reflecting and sometimes clouding the glory of her Divine Creator
> Epithalamion (1595) and Prothalamion (1596):
- wedding hymns, i.e. originally songs or poems sung outside the bride's chamber on her wedding night, re-enacting
the ceremonial and festivities of a marriage
- may be seen as the climatic celebration of the courtship pursued in the sonnets of Amoretti
(5) TUDOR LITERATURE
JOHN SKELTON (c. 1460 - 1529)
- a rhetorician, translator, Latin teacher to young Henry VIII, political pamphleteer, satirist, and ordained priest
- his poetry draws on the long tradition of medieval anticlerical satire
- uses traditional medieval modes, but typically gives these modes an unorthodox twist
- mixes high and low styles, plays bawdy verbal games with the Catholic liturgy
- rejects the ornate rhetorical devices of his period, writes in the so-called "Skeltonic metre": short lines with two
of three accents and simple doggerel rhymes, strikingly resembling a kind of proto-rap
> The Bowge of Court (c. 1490s): a satire expressing the anxiety of living in the competitive world of the court
(note: the title is the name of the ship in the poem)
> Agaynst the Scottes (1513): a satire abusing Scotland for its challenge to the authority of Henry VIII
> The Tunnying of Elynour Rummynge (c. 1520): a playfully disordered portrait of an alewife, the irregularity of
the metre evokes the atmosphere of an untidy inn, the effects of beer, and the quarrelling of the customers (note: the
tunnying of the title refers to Elynour's brewing practices)
> Speke Parrott (c. 1521), Collyn Clout (c. 1522), Why Come Ye Nat to Courte? (1522): a series of biting attacks
on Henry VIII's powerful minister-clergyman Cardinal Wolsey
> The Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell (1523): the poet's vision of himself being praised as the Homer of his
country and crowned with a laurel wreath
SIR THOMAS MORE (c. 1477 - 1535)
- born in a prominent family, received university education, but initially torn between secular and religious career
- decided to serve to Got in public life, politically remained loyal to King Henry VIII, but considered God superior
- refused to take the oath required to affirm the king as the head of the church in England, was beheaded for treason
- for his martyrdom and incessant struggle against Lutheranism canonized by the Catholic church as a saint (1935)
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- during his life befriended with Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466 - 1536), who wrote his essay "The
Praise of Folly" (1509) as a guest in More's house and dedicated it to him
- shared with Erasmus the classical learning of the Humanist movement, Catholic Christian piety, and delight in
rhetoric, satire, and experimental unsettling wit
> Utopia (1516 in Latin, 1551 in English translation):
- a prose writing influenced by Plato's Republic with its radically communalistic reimagining of society, and also
by Amerigo Vespuccio's published accounts of his voyages to the newly discovered land across the Atlantic Ocean
- Book II describes the utopian society in which private property is abolished, labour is required by everyone,
education is free and universal, but also there is no privacy, no variety in dress or housing, no individual freedom
- Book I, which was chronologically composed as second, portrays the harsh everyday reality of England
- takes the form of a dialogue between the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus (the surname means "learned in
nonsense") who argues for the ideal society he describes and the fictional Thomas More (the surname rendered into
Greek as "moros" means "fool") whose attitude toward Utopia remains deeply ambiguous
> The History of King Richard III (published posthumously in 1557):
- composed parallelly in English and Latin, but the work remains unfinished
- describes the last Yorkist king as a tyrant corrupted both physically and mentally, hypocritical, and murderous
- his portrayal of Richard III as a monster heavily influenced the prejudices of Shakespeare's play
SIR THOMAS WYATT THE ELDER (1503 - 1542)
- born in a prominent family, received university education, entered the service of King Henry VIII as a diplomat
- imprisoned in the Tower with several others accused of adulterous affairs with the disgraced queen Anne Boleyn
> "Who list his wealth and ease retain" and "In mourning wise": pays tribute to his five fellow prisoners who were
beheaded while he was spared, vividly captures the arbitrary shifts in fate and in the exercise of royal power
- many of his poems express an intense longing for steadiness and an escape from the corruption of the court life
- cultivates plain words and plain English style, uses deliberately rough, vigorous, and expressive metrical style
- translated and freely adapted into English verses by Petrarch himself and by several of his disciples
- introduced into English the Italian strambotto, an epigrammatical poem of eight or six lines in hendecasyllables
- introduced into English the sonnet, adapted the Italian form of an octave and a sestet into the English three
quatrains and a couplet with the intertwining rhyme scheme abba cddc effe gg
- while Petrarch presents love as a transcendent experience, Wyatt assumes an embittered and self-pitying position
> "They flee from me" and "Who so list to hunt": sonnets blending his characteristic passion, anger, cynicism,
longing, and pain
- little of his poetry appeared in print during his lifetime, after his death his poems were included in Songs and
Sonnets (1557), also known as Tottel's Miscellany, an influential anthology by the printer Richard Tottel
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (?1517 - 1547)
- together with Wyatt the leader of an imported avant-garde and contributor to the development of lyric tradition
- like Wyatt's poetry, Surrey's own poems were effectively canonized only by inclusion in Tottel's Miscellany
- wrote sonnets in the Petrarchan tradition, but introduced the now petrified rhyming scheme abab cdcd efef gg
- his sonnets were much admired as pioneer expressions of neoclassical propriety by 16th to 18th century critics
- characteristic with metrical regularity, but writes to a formula rather than evolving a personal mode of expression
- his translation of two books from Virgil's Aeneid made a significant move to unrhymed verse and his choice of
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iambic pentameter had a lasting effect on English poetry
SIR WALTER RALEGH (?1552 - 1618)
- a courtier, soldier, explorer and colonist, historian, philosopher, and poet
- born to a gentry of modest means, but came to amass great wealth due to his position at the court
- preoccupied with the idea of an English settlement in Guiana to which he led expeditions in hope to find gold,
claiming to the Indian chieftains that he has come on a civilizing mission to liberate them from Spanish oppressors
- known for his hatred of Spain and challenges to the Spanish dominance in the New World
- devoted to Queen Elizabeth whom he pictures in his poetry as an inaccessible immortal ideal of beauty and virtue
- self-consciously played out the roles of the formal knightly lover, courtly poet, and bold actor in the drama of life
- imprisoned in the Tower for some fifteen years and finally executed on grounds of treason by James I
> The Ocean to Cynthia: a long poem devoted to Queen Elizabeth, remains in fragments of manuscript
> "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (1600): a reply to Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
> "The Lie": a bitter poem against the court he normally celebrated, the poem itself provoked many replies
> "What is our life?": a later meditation on impending death, making use of theatrical metaphors for life
> The History of the World (1614): an ambitious unfinished work written during his imprisonment
- begins with the Creation and breaks off at 168 BC, deals with the negatives of the rise and fall of ancient empires
- reflects in an elegiac mode on disappointment and defeat, emphasizes the providential punishment of evil princes
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554 - 1586)
- born in a prominent family, became a well-connected knight, soldier, poet, and patron actively encouraging fellow
writers, including Edmund Spenser who devoted him his Shepheards Calender (1579)
- killed in a battle for the Protestant cause against the Spanish, became an object of adoring cult in the years after
his death as the image of a perfect courtier come to life
> The Lady of May (performed before the Queen in 1578 or 1579):
- a royal entertainment in the form of a dignified dispute between a shepherd and a forest for the hand of the Lady
> Arcadia (began in 1580):
- a long elaborate epic romance in prose with interspersed pastoral eclogues and songs
- builds on mistaken identities, melodramatic incidents, tangled love situations, princes disguised as shepherds, etc.
- at the same time aspires to a great literary, political, and moral value with its elevated tone of heroic seriousness
- Old Arcadia: the original version by Sidney
- New Arcadia: a revised version which Sidney broke off and his sister further revised and published after his death
> The Defence of Poesie (also as An Apology for Poetry, published 1595):
- a long prose essay, the most influential Elizabethan work of literary criticism
- exalts the role of the poet, the freedom of the imagination, and the moral value of literature
> Astrophil and Stella (written c. 1582, published 1591):
- a sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets and 11 songs concerned with the unrequited love of a star-lover (in
Greek astrophil) for a distant star (in Latin stella)
- explores the lover's state of mind and soul, the contradictory impulses, intense desires, and haunting frustrations
- by means of a constantly changing viewpoint examines the conflict between private and public obligation, when
the noble concerns of a soldier are frustrated by a woman who exercises a sometime whimsical authority over him
- while Petrarch's Laura remains coolly unresponsive, Sidney's Astrophil holds to hope that Stella might still favour
him and ends his long campaign with a sense of failure, not with Petrarch's idea of love as a purifying experience
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MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1561 - 1621)
- the educated and sophisticated sister of Philip Sidney
- besides her revisions of Arcadia, she also revised and continued her brother's verse translation of the Psalms
- produced strikingly original verse of a great metrical, lexical, phrasal, and metaphorical variety
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564 - 1593)
- little is known about his life, but probably served as a spy or agent provocateur against the English Catholics who
were conspiring to overthrow the Protestant regime
- killed at an inn in the London suburb of Deptford by a dagger thrust, his murderers having connections to the
world of spies to which Marlowe himself was linked
- his tragedies portray characters passionately seeking power beyond the boundaries of conventional human beings,
the power of rule in Tamburlaine, power of money in The Jew of Malta, and power of knowledge in Faustus
- his dramatic verse cultivates the English iambic pentameter
> "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1590s):
- the most popular of Elizabethan lyrics, provoked many responses, both imitations and parodies
- quoted by Marlowe himself in The Jew of Malta, by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, provoked W.
Raleigh's response "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd", and J. Donne's parody "The Bait"
> Hero and Leander (published 1598):
- a mythological fanciful erotic poem, a free and original treatment of a classic tale about two ill-fated lovers
- inspired by the Greek poet Musaeus (5th century BC) and by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD)
- Hero is a nun vowed to chastity and a devotee of the love goddess Venus, Leander is both a sophisticated seducer
and an innocent novice in sex
- characteristic with its comic and playful tone, irony and hyperbole, cruelty and cynicism
- remained unfinished, later completed by George Chapman in a rather awkward moralizing and philosophical tone
> Tamburlaine the Great (published 1590):
- follows the exploits of a 14th century Mongol warrior who rose from humble origins to conquer a huge territory
- the protagonist incorporates boundless energy, ambition, and impulse to strive ceaselessly for absolute power
- shows strife, restlessness, and unfettered ambition as embedded in the laws of nature and in human psychology
- though his aspirations are limitless, his ability to obtain fulfilment is restricted by forces beyond his control
> The Jew of Malta (performed c. 1592, published 1633):
- shows a protagonist obsessed with the idea of accumulating "infinite riches in a little room", who is eventually
outwitted and sent to his death
> The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (performed in 1590s, published 1604):
- based on an old folklore motif of a man exchanging with devil the access to the forbidden knowledge of black
magic for the eternal damnation of his soul
- contains some comic scenes of low practical joking contrasting with the passages of high ambition
> Edward II (published 1592):
- follows the fate of a homosexual king born into an inheritance of royal government, effectively throwing it away
by preference of love to men, and finally being reduced by his enemies to the depths of human misery
- unlike his other tragedies does not celebrate the dangerous detachment of the protagonist from the limiting
restraints of society, but explores the problem of moral conflict within an established society
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THOMAS KYD (1558 - 1594)
- a close associate of C. Marlowe
- his theatrical style is characteristic with the fusion of violent action, exaggerated gesture, and boisterous rhetoric
> The Spanish Tragedy: or, Hieronimo is Mad Again (1592):
- follows the fate of Hieronimo, a father determined to revenge the murder of his son
- intermixes dense plotting, intense action, swift dialogue, and long rhetorically shaped soliloquies
- pioneers the highly influential subgenre of revenge tragedy
- introduces a new kind of protagonist: an obsessive, brooding, mistrustful, and alienated plotter(6 - 10)
BACKGROUND TO THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (1603 - 1660)
CHRONOLOGY
1603:
Accession of James I, beginning of Stuart dynasty
1605:
The Gunpowder Plot, a failed effort by Catholic extremists to blow Parliament and the king
1625:
Accession of Charles I
1629:
Charles I dissolves Parliament
1640 - 53: Long Parliament called
1642 - 46: First Civil War; theatres closed
1648:
Second Civil War; Pride's Purge of Parliament
1649:
Trial and execution of Charles I for treason; declaration of republic
1653 - 58: Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector
1658 - 59: Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector
1660:
Restoration of Charles II
1665:
The Great Plague
1666:
The Great Fire
POLITICS AND RELIGION
- the Stuart kings James I and his son Charles II constantly fought with their Parliaments over taxes, religion,
unpopular ministers, parliamentary rights, etc.
- both kings practised royal absolutism, James I wrote two treatises defending the absolute rights of the monarch,
The True Law of Free Monarchies (1597) and Basilikon Doran (1598)
- by contrast with Elizabeth's, James's court was disorderly and indecorous, marked by hard drinking, late-night
feasting, a craze for hunting, and great extravagance
- the discovery and thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot, in which Catholic conspirators led by Guy Fawkes plotted
to blow up the Parliament and seize control of the government, unified Protestants in a wave of anti-Catholicism
- Puritans (extremist Protestants) pressed for more reformation so as to bring the English church into closer
conformity with the Presbyterian Church in Geneva established by the Protestant reformer John Calvin
- the Revolution of 1642 could be seen as a natural consequence of the long-term changes in society and economy:
the conflict between new capitalist and old feudal modes, the rising power of the country gentry and the urban
bourgeoisie, and the demands of these classes for more economic, political, and religious freedom
- the Civil War contributed to the development of liberal concepts of religious toleration, separation of church and
state, representative government, popular sovereignty, and republicanism
- the Long Parliament (1640) did not intend to overthrow the king, but to secure the rights of the Parliament in the
face of the king's absolutist tendencies, to limit the king's control over the army and the church, and to settle some
version of Presbyterianism as the national established church
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- in the First Civil War (1642 - 1646) and the brief Second Civil War (1648) Charles I was defeated, the victorious
army purged the Parliament of its royalist members and abolished the House of Lords, and the King was brought to
trial and executed for treason (1649)
- the Rump Parliament, i.e. the members of the House of Commons who remained after the purge, established a
republic, but the state was threatened on all sides, which led to the Protectorate under Oliver and then Richard
Cromwell and then to the final restoration of the exiled king Charles II to the throne
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
- culture kept on to be influenced by various long lasting broad political, religious, and cultural movements: the
Reformation, exploration and colonization, the rising bourgeois, the printing press and expansion of literacy, etc.
- brought into opposition old and new ideas about the nature of things:
> the old view of the earth as fixed in the centre of universe with the sun revolving around it, the assumption of
perfection above the moon and corruption beneath, the four elements comprising the matter of all things (fire, air,
water, earth), the four humours of the body determining temperament (choler, blood, phlegm, melancholy), etc.
> the new challenges of worldview by Bacon's empiricism with emphasis on scientific method, Galileo's
construction of the telescope and his astronomy dislodging the earth from its central stable position and sending it
revolving around the sun, Gabriel Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, etc.
> while e.g. John Donne kept faithful to the old beliefs, others embraced the new science, e.g. John Milton made
complex poetic use of the astronomical controversy in his Paradise Lost (1667)
LITERATURE PROMOTERS
- the court remains an important site of literary activity, especially of the court masque, i.e. a royal entertainment
traditionally presented at Christmastide and most often on Twelfth Night (6th January)
- masques portrayed the king as source of all power and splendour in the kingdom, were danced by royal and noble
personages, and customarily ended with the masquers unmasking and dancing with other courtiers in a symbolic
fusion of the ideal world and the Stuart court
> e.g. Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness praises James I as the Sun-King whose power could turned blackskinned people into whites
- beyond the court some noblemen retained their status as local patrons supporting poets and playwrights,
especially prominent were the interrelated families of the Sidneys at Penshurst and the Herberts at Wilton
> Ben Jonson's country-house poem "To Penshurst" celebrates the Sidney estate as an alternative ideal to the court,
hospitable alike to poets and kings, and his collection of poems The Forrest (1616) includes several other poems
associated with the Sidney family
- the church promoted some kinds of writing, especially sermons; treatises of devotion, meditation, and instruction;
and controversial tracts defending the Protestant faith
> e.g. John Donne and Launcelot Andrews were gifted preachers of the Church of England
- the City of London commissioned Lord Mayors' pageants and other civic entertainments, booksellers contracted
for books of domestic advice, devotional treatises, manuals, and tracts of political and religious controversy
- theatres flourished outside the City, as the only sphere in which authors could support themselves by writing
> the city comedy is established as new kind of drama, drawing satirical and comic matter from the life of London,
e.g. Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (performed 1614)
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LITERATURE WRITERS
- several prominent Elizabethan genres cease to be practised: long allegorical or mythological narratives, sonnet
sequences, and pastoral poems
- other genres rise to prominence: love elegy and satire after the classical models of Ovid and Horace, epigram,
verse epistle, dramatic monologue, religious lyrics, and country-house poem
- poetry abandons the formerly favourite stylistic features as nature imagery, florid ornament, and sonorous
lyricism in favour of short and very concentrated poems in a colloquial and often witty plain style
> John Donne introduces the metaphysical conceit: his poetry abounds in learned terms and images, witty play
with paradoxes and ironies, dramatic language, and interchanging of the vocabulary of sexual and religious love
> Ben Jonson claims a new dignity for the poet when he publishes his masques, plays, and poems as Works (1616),
the same title which King James chose for his treatises and poems published earlier in the same year: Jonson's
poetry embodies the classical values of decorum, simplicity, restraint, economy, good workmanship, and art
> George Herbert perfects religious verse in The Temple (1633), contemplating the necessity and at the same time
impossibility of a Christian poet giving fit and sincere praise to God
> Francis Bacon brings from France to England the familiar essay, adjusting it to present society's accumulated
practical wisdom from the point of the man trying to make his way in the world: the final edition of Essays (1625)
gives a penetrating insight into the interests, problems, and modes of thought of the ruling class in Jacobean society
> Lady Mary Wroth, the countess of Pembroke (niece of Philip Sidney), represents one of the new voices of
women, most of them from the nobility or gentry and all educated above the norm for women of the period: Wroth
wrote e.g. the Petrarchan sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) or the prose romance Urania
(1621)(6) WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564 - 1616)
LIFE AND CAREER
- born in the small market town of Stratford-on-Avon as the son of a successful glovemaker, landowner,
moneylender, and dealer in agricultural commodities
- his father later suffered financial and social reverses, possibly as a result of adherence to Catholic faith
- attended the free Stratford grammar school, gained some knowledge of Latin, but did not proceed to university
- married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, had daughter Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith
- connected with the London company of professional actors, Lord Chamberlain's Men, renamed King's Men
when James I came to the throne
- became a leading shareholder of the company and the principal playwright
- performed in the Globe, an open-air theatre the company built for itself on the south bank of the Thames (1599),
at the court, and at the indoor London theatre Blackfriars (since 1608)
PLAYS
- had evidently no interest in preserving his plays for posterity, let alone in clarifying the chronology or in
specifying which plays he wrote alone and which in collaboration
- wrote plays exclusively for the performance by his company, his scripts existed in his own manuscripts and pirate
copies, but none of these manuscripts has survived
- eighteen of his plays were published during his lifetime in the small-format inexpensive books called quartos
- eighteen other plays were collected posthumously in a large folio entitled Mr William Shakespeares Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies (1623)
EARLY COMEDIES
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> The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1587) and The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1588):
- his two earliest comedies dramatize the ambiguities of his age concerning the freedom of women to act and think
independently in courtship and marriage
- in the former a woman dangerously resolves to prove her faith to an undeserving lover, in the latter a woman is
brutally schooled in wifely duty by a husband who appears not to merit her service
- the former is also the first of Shakespeare's many theatrical experiments with female cross-dressing, i.e. with the
ambiguity of a boy actor playing the role of a girl who dresses as a boy
> The Comedy of Errors (c. 1589 - 94):
- a symmetrical comedy relieved by reflections on family and amatory relationships almost slipping into tenderness
- displays a rare command of the resources of comedy: mistaken identity, madcap confusion, and the threat of
disaster giving way in the end to reconciliation, recovery, and love
> Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595):
- the most ostentatiously artificial of his comedies, focusing on word-play rather than on the development of plot
HISTORY PLAYS
- in his first sequence of plays based on English history Shakespeare finds his own distinctive voice
- gives an overreaching moral vision of English history and a political and patriotic statement of some potency
- considers the relation of civil order to central government, suggests that king and subject are linked together by
mutual responsibilities, and shows the failure in these responsibilities on the part of rulers (Claudius's usurpation in
Hamlet) as well as subjects (peasants' revolt in Henry VI)
- his history plays have continued to shape British perceptions of the national past and of nationhood, to English
and European Romantic poets Shakespeare emerged as the leading example in the moulding of a particular national
consciousness and the model from which future national historical drama could develop
> Henry VI (c. 1588 - 91), in III parts:
- follows Henry VI, the King of England of the House of Lancaster (1422 - 61 and 1470 - 71) and a claimant to the
kingdom of France (1422 - 53), the quest of Joan of Arc and her death at stake, and the outbreak of the Wars of the
Roses (1455 - 85)
> Richard III (c. 1592):
- follows Richard III, the King of England of the House of York (1483 - 85), the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, his
defeat by Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII, and death in the battle of Bosworth Field, which put an end to the
Wars of the Roses
- Richard III is portrayed as a monstrous villain formed by his time dominated by violence and hypocrisy
> Richard II (c. 1595, published 1597):
- in Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V explores the death throes of feudal England and the birth of the modern
nation-state ruled by a charismatic monarch
- the dying John of Gaunt of Richard II expresses a vision of an ideal, separate, secure, peaceful, kingly, little
island, which however does not exist, and so anticipates the reality of a realm descending into disunity and war as it
is exposed in Henry IV and Henry V
- John of Gaunt (1340 - 99), son of Edward III, exercised great influence over the English throne during the
minority reign of his nephew, Richard II, and his death meant a final disruption to the fragile political stability
- the play follows Richard II, the tyrannous King of England (1377 - 99), and his insistence on his divine right to
unconditional obedience irrespective of his actual fitness to rule, whose exploits were terminated by his deposition
and imprisonment in the Tower
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> King John (c. 1595):
- follows the reign of King John of England (1199 - 1216), the challenge to his throne posed by the French King
Philip who urges him to abdicate, his excommunication by the pope, and his death by poisoning
- features a well developed strong character of the Bastard, a predecessor of Falstaff in Henry IV, who is the only
character to be given prolonged soliloquies, often in the form of asides commentaries to the audience
> Henry IV (c. 1596 and c. 1597), in II parts:
- follows the reign of Henry IV (1399 - 1413), son of John Gaunt, successor of the deposed Richard II, but focuses
chiefly on Prince Hal, the future Henry V, and his association with Falstaff, Shakespeare's amplest comic invention
> Henry V (1599):
- celebrates patriotic heroism in following the reign of Henry V (1413 - 22), a strong king who united the thrones of
England and France, stages the triumph of Agincourt, and also briefly deals with the death of Falstaff
> Henry VIII (also as All is True, c. 1612 - 13):
- a late play, its finest part being the trial of Queen Katharine, the divorced wife of Henry VIII
ROMANTIC COMEDIES
- exploits the devices of disguise and cross-dressing, but tends to demote such festive fooling to sub-plots and
focus on the pains, strains, and pleasures of young love instead
- in his histories and tragedies the author is obliged to reflect on power struggles between men, women are
marginalized unless they are denied aspects of their femininity (Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra)
- in his comedies women's integrity and intelligence is allowed briefly to triumph, the successful resolution of each
play depends upon the resourcefulness of its woman protagonist (Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Rosalind in As
You Like It, or Viola in Twelfth Night)
> A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595 - 6):
- a representative comedy beginning with crossed purposes and ending happily with multiple marriages
> The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596 - 7)
> The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597):
- reintroduces characters from his Henry IV plays, including e.g. Falstaff as a self-deceived wooer of married
woman who ends up disappointed and humiliated
- allows for the triumph of romantic love over the well-intentioned schemes of parents and the ill-conceived ones of
a would-be adulterer
> Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598 - 9)
> As You Like It (c. 1599 - 1600)
> Twelfth Night (c. 1601)
TRAGEDIES
- mark a shift to an existential and metaphysical darkening, probably originating in a deep personal anguish of the
author, perhaps caused by the death of his father John (1601)
- represent exemplary dramatic falls of kings and princes on whose fortunes depend those of the nations they rule,
who fall from a height of influence and honour, and whose fall stirs the proper emotions of pity and fear
- reinforces the portrayal of an uncertain, dangerous, and mortal tragic world by employing the representation of
carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, as accidental judgements, casual slaughters, and deaths put on by cunning
- his emphasis on mortality reflects the violence of contemporary political life haunted by treason and assassination
- often stages suicide, in earlier plays in accordance with the view of his contemporaries of suicide as a damnable
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act, as an incomprehensible rash end to present woes (Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia in Hamlet), in mature tragedies as
a noble act of classical Roman dignity (see Antony and Cleopatra and Othello)
> Hamlet (c. 1599 - 1601):
- blurs the clean lines of revenge tragedy by making Hamlet contemplate issues veering off from the central one
- Hamlet faces the public problem of how to avenge a political murder in a culture where private vengeance is
unacceptable and the private problem of how to come to terms with the death of his father, the accession of his
uncle, and the remarriage of his mother
> Othello (1604):
- Othello's suicide is the response of a soldier who must follow through the consequences of his earlier illconsidered resolution if he is to preserve what is left of his honour and integrity
> King Lear (c. 1605, printed 1608):
- the most obviously revised of his major tragedies, printed with different texts in 1608 and in the 1623 Folio
- between 1681 and 1838 played mostly with Nahum Tate's happy ending
- explores the awkward, nasty, and uncomfortable aspects of the human condition in an alien world which
questions all human values and all human relationships
- one of his most disturbing plays in stripping the characters of their tragic dignity, offering little catharsis,
resolution, or absolution, and silencing the villainous and virtuous alike
> Macbeth (c. 1606):
- explores a monarch's despair at having to live with the consequences of his bloody appliance of autocracy, but
also gives much space to the portrayal of the strong defeminized Lady Macbeth
ROMAN PLAYS
- deal with historical alternatives, but also vividly reflect back on Shakespeare's present (e.g. corn riots)
- shows the threat to the Roman Republic by patrician arrogance and plebeian self-assertion in Coriolanus, a now
tired republic commanding an empire in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, and an imperial decadence in
Titus Andronicus
- the four Roman plays represent history as a warning against demagoguery and decadence
> Titus Andronicus (c. 1587, published 1594):
- his earliest attempt at tragedy, theatrically vital, but stylistically crude
- responds to T. Kyd's revenge dramas with a sensational replay of his themes and echoes of his rhetoric
> Julius Caesar (1599)
> Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606 - 7):
- Antony's suicide is the proper response of a Roman general to military failure and the only alternative to public
disgrace, while Cleopatra's suicide suggests the possibility of a final reunion with a transfigured and heroic husband
> Coriolanus (c. 1608)
DARK COMEDIES, OR, PROBLEM COMEDIES
- more biting in tone, more uneasy with comic conventions, more ruthlessly questioning of the values of the
characters and the resolutions of the plot
> Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602)
> All's Well That Ends Well (c. 1603)
> Measure for Measure (1604)
LATE ROMANCES
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- develops a fluid dreamlike sense of plot and a highly poetic style
- interfuses comic and tragic themes, focuses on loss and recovery, suffering and redemption, despair and renewal
- contrasts the shortcomings of an older generation with the hopes represented by a new
> Pericles (c. 1607 - 8)
> Cymbeline (c. 1610 - 11)
> The Winter's Tale (c. 1609 - 10)
> The Tempest (c. 1610 - 11)
NARRATIVE POEMS
- in search for patronage, Shakespeare devoted his two narrative poems to the young nobleman Henry Wriothesley,
earl of Southampton, but the outcome of the patronage is unknown
> Venus and Adonis (1593):
- shares the Ovidian reference, irony, and amused irreverence of C. Marlowe's Hero and Leander (published 1598)
- contrasts the passive male sexuality of Adonis with the active female one of Venus
- follows the courtship of a young man by a wicked goddess, from whom Adonis escapes to follow his adolescent
fascination with hunting, but is finally killed by a boar
> The Rape of Lucrece (1594):
- retells the story of the rape of the virtuous Roman noblewoman Lucrece by the libidinous Sextus Tarquinius, son
of King Tarquin, and Lucrece's resolute response to her violation in the high Roman fashion, i.e. suicide, which she
sees as the only way to restore her husband's honour
> "A Lover's Complaint" (published as an addendum to Sonnets, 1609):
- the confession of a country girl who recognizes that she had been deceived by her lover's empty promises
> "The Passionate Pilgrim" (1599):
- a fusion of several poems published under Shakespeare's name, some of them early versions of his sonnets, some
of them extracts from Love's Labour's Lost, and some poems now known to be written by other writers
> "The Phoenix and Turtle" (1601):
- a lyric lament of the death of love's perfection
SONNETS
- the series of 154 sonnets was published in 1609, apparently without Shakespeare's personal supervision and
perhaps without his consent
- established the English sonnet form comprising three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg,
which came to be called the Shakespearean sonnet
- each of the three distinct quatrains may develop a separate metaphor, the closing couplet may either confirm or
pull sharply against what has gone before
- characteristic with great intensity, density, concentration, and compression: often the main idea may be grasped
quickly, but the precise movement of thought and feeling is challenging to grasp
- the whole sequence conveys a sense of high psychological and moral stakes
- unprecedented in his choice of a beautiful young aristocratic man (rather than a lady) as the object of praise, love,
and idealizing devotion
- equally striking in his portrait of a dark, sensuous, and sexually promiscuous mistress (rather than the usual chaste
and aloof blond beauty)
- abandons the traditional scheme of a despairing Petrarchan lover in favour of more various moods of delight,
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pride, melancholy, shame, disgust, and fear
- sonnets 1 - 17: celebrate the Fair Young Man and urge him to marry and beget children who will bear his image
- sonnets 18 - 126: passionately focus on the same beloved young man, but develop the dominant motif of the
destructive power of time which can be countered only by the force of love and the permanence of poetry
- sonnets 76 - 86: disturbed by the threat posed by a rival poet
- sonnets 127 - 152: focus chiefly on the so-called Dark Lady as an alluring but degrading object of desire
- sonnet 144: intimates an emotional love triangle involving the speaker, the male friend, and the woman
- sonnets 153 - 154: plays fancifully with the stories of Cupid and the loss of his phallic brand(7) JACOBEAN
LITERATURE
BEN JONSON (1572 - 1637)
LIFE AND CAREER
- the first English professional writer to invest that role with dignity and respectability
- collected his plays and poems under the title Works (1616), the same title King James I gave to his political
treatises published in the same year, and so laid claim to a higher literary status than his contemporaries did
- many of his contemporaries were not interested in publishing their works, as e.g. J. Donne they wrote for small
coterie audiences, or as e.g. W. Shakespeare wrote for theatre companies which preferred not to let go of the scripts
- in his early life faces many difficulties: killed a fellow actor in a duel and escaped the gallows only by pleading
benefit of clergy (a medieval privilege allowing felons who could read and write Latin to be tried by a more lenient
ecclesiastical court), also was repeatedly charged for his plays (e.g. for 'popery and treason' found in Sejanus)
- with the accession of James I established himself at the court with his masques and gathered about himself a
group of admiring younger men, the 'Sons of Ben', including e.g. Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and others
- himself was supported by several patrons, including Lady Mary Wroth, Sir Walter Ralegh, and members of the
Sidney and Herbert families
POEMS
- tried many poetic genres: epitaph and epigram, love and funeral elegy, verse satire and verse epistle, song and ode
- in poetry and in drama looked back to classical Roman precedents, from the poets Horace and Martial derived
generic models as well as an ideal vision of the artist and society
> Epigrammes (1616):
- adapts the compact epigram perfected in Latin by Juvenal and Horace into a rhymed English form
- contains pithy addresses to his muse, to King James, to prominent noblemen and noblewomen, to literary friends,
allies, and enemies
- includes several epigrams in praise of his patroness Lady Mary Wroth
> The Forrest (1616):
- includes a Horatian epistle addressed to Sir Robert Worth, Lady Mary's husband, which contrasts the vices,
sports, and entertainments of the city and the court with the alternative pleasures of country life
> "To Penshurst" (1616):
- inaugurates the small genre of the country-house poem in England
- celebrates the country estate of Sir Robert Sidney, Mary Wroth's father, and offers an ideal image of a social order
in which a virtuous patriarchal governor offers ready hospitality to poets and kings alike
- dwells on the idea of the open-handed generosity, easy elegance, and unaffected cultivation, which he sees as a
link between a modern aristocracy and the patrician patrons of the ancient Roman poets
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MASQUES
- in 1603 with the accession of James I and Queen Anne the court masque started to flourish as a major form of
entertainment, praise, and political idealization of the Stuart court as the embodiment of all perfections
- masques combined songs, speech, richly ornamented costumes, shifting scene panels depicting elaborate
architecture and landscapes, and intricate machines in which gods and goddesses descented from heaven
- the speaking parts were taken by professionals, but the dancers were members of the court, including women
- in 1605 Jonson received the commission to organize the Twelfth night entertainments, consequently produced a
series of twenty-four masques in collaboration with the architect and scene designer Inigo Jones, and established
himself as the chief writer of court masques for the following more than two decades
> The Masque of Blackness (1605):
- asserts the cultural superiority of the English over non-European peoples and celebrates the patriarchal power of
James as the 'Sun King' of Britain who can turn black skin to white
- contains also a subversive current in that the promised transformation of the ladies' skin is never seen, plus there
is a lengthy praise of black beauty delivered by a Niger
COMEDIES
- criticized the vogue for tragi-comical mixed drama and the bombastic tragedies of 1590s, as T. Kyd's The Spanish
Tragedy (1592) and Shakespeare's earliest and bloodiest tragedy Titus Andronicus (c. 1587, published 1594)
- emphasized that comedy was considered by the Greeks to be equal in dignity to tragedy, preferred to represent a
shared and deficient humanity rather than to elevate and isolate the tragic hero, and was careful in preserving the
three Greek unities in his own drama
- his earlier plays ridicule the absurdities, anomalies, and inconsistencies typified as 'humours', his later plays deal
more directly with power and manipulation
- his comedies possess an extravagance of characterization coupled with an extraordinary neatness of plotting
> Every Man in His Humour (1598, revised 1616):
- inaugurates the comedy of humours, which ridicules the ruling eccentricities of the characters then thought to be
caused by physiological imbalance
- the first version was acted out in a Florentine setting with Italian-sounding characters, the revised version takes
place in London and features English characters
> Volpone (performed 1606, published 1607):
- satirizes human greed in the Venice setting, but targets at London as a place of commerce as well as corruption
- protests the inhumanity not just of greedy people but of greedy laws, i.e. laws made by the greedy to protect the
acquisitions of the greedy
- draws on the classical satirist Lucian who provides the theme of a rich old man playing with the money-grubbing
scoundrels who hope to inherit his wealth
> Epicene, or the Silent Woman (1610, published 1616):
- centres on the obsession of the misanthropic character Morose with silence
- Morose marries a silent woman in order to spite his nephew, but the wife turns out to be a boy dressed as a girl,
and the play concludes with the necessary divorce and the financial justification of the disinherited nephew
> The Alchemist (1610, published 1612):
- the play focuses on egocentricity, which is reinforced by the dividing of the characters from one another by their
distinctive voices, idiolects, or professional jargon
- features the professional trickster Subtle who exploits a wide range of London City citizens, most of them
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tricksters alike, before he disappears in the conclusion to find his next victims somewhere in larger London
> Bartholomew Fair (1614, published 1631):
- represents the new sub-genre of drama, city comedy, which draws satirically on the life of London and Londoners
- set in London's once great August Fair, portrayed as a carnivalesque city beyond the City, which draws those who
attempt to restrain it into its very reversals, surprises, and role changes
ROMAN TRAGEDIES
- abound in learned reference to Latin historians, orators, and poets
- draw parallels between Roman corruption and the instability of the modern state
> Sejanus (1603, printed 105): follows the fates of Emperor Tiberius and his low-born favourite Sejanus through
whom his master rules, sees equal danger in the unnatural advance of a commoner and in the autocratic government
> Catiline (1611): presents an analogy between the Catiline conspiracy (63 BC) and the Gunpowder Plot (1605)
JOHN WEBSTER (c. 1578 - c. 1634)
- his two tragedies are set in the Roman Catholic Italy and follow the common Jacobean stereotype of Italy as a
place of sophisticated and morbid corruption, but both are also based on recent true occurrences in the Italian courts
- both feature bold and brave female protagonists who refuse to submit to male patriarchs and choose their life
partners for love rather than for reason
- Webster borrows devices, effects, themes, and metaphors from his fellow English dramatists, but manages to
place his borrowings in strikingly novel and distinctive contexts
> The White Devil (c. 1608 - 12, printed 1612):
- a woman is tried for supposed adultery and murder and is convicted by the court of corrupt magistrates
- she keeps her moral integrity and stands as a lonely pattern of virtues in an otherwise dark and immoral world
> The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613 - 14, printed 1623):
- a noble ruler of Malfi marries secretly her steward against the command of her brothers that she remain a widow
- her brothers, a duke and a cardinal, determine to destroy their sister, her husband, and their children, led by the
dark motives of greed for her fortune, overweening pride in their noble blood, and incestuous desire
- the play weds sublime poetry and Gothic horror in the macabre mental and physical torments to which the
Duchess is subjected by her brothers, in the lunatic ravings of the duke after he strangles her, and in the conclusion
in which the stage is littered with the corpses of all the principal characters
JOHN FLETCHER (1579 - 1625)
- produced most of his works in collaboration
- influenced by the prose pastorals of Philip Sidney and his Italian models
- combines intrigue and romance, the amorous and the perilous, the bucolic and the lyrical
- focuses on tragi-comedies following the formula of a happy denouement implying that even in an imperfect world
virtue could be perfectly rewarded
> The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1608):
- his early Hellenic pastoral
> The Maid's Tragedy (c. 1610, published 1619):
- a tragedy in collaboration with Francis Beaumont
- shows the entangled relationships of a married couple in which the wife is a king's mistress and the husband
leaves behind a mistress of his own
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- concludes with the wife's murder of the king and her own suicide, with the abandoned mistress's dying in a duel
with the husband which she provoked in disguise for a man, and with the husband's suicide beside her corpse
> Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding (c. 1609, published 1620):
- a tragi-comedy in collaboration with Francis Beaumont
- shows injustices happily reversed, disasters averted, and heirs restored to their rights
> A King and No King (1611, published 1619):
- a tragi-comedy in collaboration with Francis Beaumont
- resolves the king's incestuous passion for his sister and his plans for murder, rape, and suicide by the timely
revelation that the king is neither a king nor a brother
> The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613, published 1634):
- in collaboration with William Shakespeare
- retells G. Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" with its knightly rivalries, vexed relationships, and sudden reversals
FRANCIS BEAUMONT (1584 - 1616)
> The Maid's Tragedy: a tragedy in collaboration with John Fletcher
> Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding and A King and No King: tragi-comedies in collaboration with John Fletcher
> The Knight of the Burning Pestle (c. 1607, published 1613):
- his own burlesque
- set at the Blackfriars Theatre in which a performance of a genteel play is interrupted by an unruly merchant
citizen and his wife who demand a play more to their middle-brow taste
- attempts to reconcile chivalry and trade to confirm to the demand of the audience for plays drawing on the
contemporary mercantile London life
THOMAS MIDDLETON (1580 -1627)
- his London comedies explores the new mercantile value systems which he sees as corrupting urban society
- his ingenious comic protagonists suggest that quick wit is the best defence against arbitrary oppression
- started writing comedies, later turned to tragedies, including a collaboration with William Rowley (?1585 - 1626)
> A Mad World, My Masters (c. 1605 - 7, published 1608):
- a city comedy
> A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605, published 1608):
- a comedy in which the young protagonist outwits two elderly gentlemen, one of them his uncle from whom he
regains his lost inheritance, from the other he wins a bride
> A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611):
- a comedy featuring a bourgeois family which seeks to secure its new position in society by marrying off their
daughter to a wealthy but morally corrupt aristocrat and their son to a supposedly rich widow
- the play exposes pretensions, false estimates, and idle expectations before it arrives to its happy denouement in
which both the daughter and the son escape the planned marriages to be united with partners of their own choice
> The Revenger's Tragedy (published 1607):
- a tragedy set in an unpleasant Italian court which is clearly associated with the corruptions of Jacobean England
- uses irony akin to Ben Jonson's, like Jonson's Volpone also chooses Italianate versions as names for the typefigures of earlier English morality plays (the revenger is called Vindice, his wronged brother's name is translated as
Chaste, the villains are Lecherous, Ambitious, Vain, etc.)
- the play's discourse is built around frank statements of villainy, cynical assertions of self-justification, and quasi-
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proverbial maxims
> Women Beware Women (c. 1621, published 1657):
- a tragedy with two interwoven plots in which two women shortly enjoy the exercise of sexual, financial, and
political power in a sordid patriarchal society before they are driven to their downfall
> The Changeling (1622, published 1652):
- a tragedy in collaboration with William Rowley
- a woman attempts to escape from an undesired marriage by hiring a man to murder her fiancé, her plan is marred
by the murder's desiring her virginity as a price, but the woman realizes that her hatred and physical repulsion
towards the murderer have strangely transformed into love and attraction
GEORGE CHAPMAN (?1559 - 1634)
> Bussy D'Ambois (c. 1604, printed 1607):
- based on the dangerous career of a protégé of the brother of Henry III of France in the nasty French court
- the protagonist Bussy is a misfit in the corrupt courtly world in which he moves
- he ends up mortally wounded by the chief of his many enemies, on which he props himself up on his sword and
proclaims himself a Roman statue, already a monument to his future fame
> The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (c. 1610, printed 1613):
- a sequel to the former play, in which Bussy's angry ghost urges his brother to avenge him, but the brother finds
himself unable to live in the dark intrigues of the French court and kills himself
- the conclusion suggests that Bussy may be revenged, but the ultimate triumph belongs to the corrupt society
> The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (c. 1607, printed 1608):
- in contrast to the preceding plays the downfall of the protagonist is caused by his supreme self-confidence
- the protagonist intrigues against the order imposed by the king, but is revealed and condemned to death
> Iliad and Odyssey (1616): his highly influential translations of Homer's epics(8) METAPHYSICAL POETS
METAPHYSICAL POETS
- a label used for a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century
- the term was first applied by Samuel Johnson in the 18th century to describe the supposed contortions of style and
strained 'conceits' of the poets who defied the then accepted 'classical' canons of taste
- the poets shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them
- wrote rigorous and energetic verse appealing to the reader's intellect rather than emotions
- employed inventive and elaborate style, learned imagery, paradox, and oxymoron
- metaphysics: a branch of speculative philosophy concerned with explaining the world
- metaphysical poets: John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Sir John Suckling
- metaphysical religious poets: George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan
JOHN DONNE (1572 - 1631)
LIFE AND CAREER
- born into a Roman Catholic family, but in his twenties converted to the English church to avoid persecution
- his way to prosperity was spoilt by a secret marriage to a niece of his prominent employer, on which he was
forced to retire to a country life beset by financial insecurity
- King James I prevented his civil promotion and urged on him an ecclesiastical career, he finally consented and
became a successful court preacher and dean of St Paul's Cathedral
> Sermons (published 1640):
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- contains eighty of his sermons, prepared for the publication and revised by the author himself
- his sermons were greatly appreciated for their powerful metaphorical style, bold erudition, and dramatic wit
- prefers contemplating sin, death, and judgement rather than rejoicing at the prospect of heaven
>> "Death's Duel" (1631, published 1632):
- his own funeral sermon, the last sermon he delivered, having risen for the occasion from his deathbed
- stresses the interconnection of life and death throughout human existence
- calls for repentance not only from an awareness of his own early death, but also from a sense of shared mortality
POETIC STYLE
- favoured the classical Roman genres of satire and elegy
- wrote occasional poems for friends and patrons and for small coteries of courtiers and ladies
- uses starling and playful images, puns, paradoxes, and elaborate metaphors known as 'conceits'
- ostentatiously displays his intelligence, wit, and erudition
- renders his poems as dramatic monologues in which the speaker's ideas seem to evolve from one line to another
- presents the dynamic mental conflict with its own creative energy which may lead to the resolution of a paradox
- uses dramatic prosody, his variable and jagged rhythms mirror the effect of speech
- his poems contain a great variety of attitudes, viewpoints, and feelings on the subjects of love and religion
- exploits theological language in love poetry and daringly erotic images in religious verse
POETRY
> Satires (c. 1590s, printed 1633):
- speculative, colloquial, and boisterous, suggesting a narrator trapped in the animated life of the streets and houses
- four of his five satires treat commonplace Elizabethan topics of foppish courtiers, bad poets, corrupt lawyers, etc.
- unique in his use of images of pestilence, itchy lust, vomit, excrement, and pox to create a corrupt satiric world
- one of his satires treats the quest for true religion, arguing that doubting search is preferable to simple acceptance
of any established religious tradition
> Elegies (mostly c. 1590s, printed 1633):
- his love elegies are witty representations of adventurous travel and love liaisons
>> "Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed":
- variously compares the human body to a map, a landscape, or a continent
- his fondling of a naked lover becomes in a conceit the equivalent of exploration in America
>> "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning":
- develops the image of a circle which stands for eternity, having neither a beginning nor an end, but being both
> Songs and Sonnets (published posthumously, 1633):
- challenges the popular Petrarchan sonnet sequences of 1590s: there is only one formal sonnet, the songs are not
notably lyrical, rather draws on a whole range of literary traditions concerned with love
- comprises fifty-five various poems developing different situations, but always presenting a speaker in immediate
relation to a listener
- reveals intensive emotions which are not static but rather shifting and evolving with the turns of the poet's thought
>> "The Flea":
- light-hearted, witty, cynical, and frankly lustful in the Ovidian mode
- comically demonstrates the folly of resisting seduction
>> "The Funeral":
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- presents himself as the Petrarchan lover of an unattainable lady
- makes an easy, even jesting, play with mortality
>> "The Sun Rising":
- an Ovidian celebration of eroticism in an irreverent address to the Sun who has dared to awake the sleeping lovers
- presents two worlds, one of petty activity and drudgery, another of wealth and power, but both outclassed by love
LANCELOT ANDREWES (1555 - 1626)
- a contemporary of metaphysical poets, though not one himself, together with J. Donne a major court preacher
- delivered his sermons at the court on the great feast-days of the Christian calender
- felt antipathy to Puritan rigidity, particularly in matters concerned with the absolute authority of the Scriptures
> XCVI Sermons (1629):
- gives exacting, precise, unemotional, yet powerful arguments analysing Scriptural texts
- concentrates on several words of the text from which he steadily extracts meaning
- preoccupied with the logos, which he takes both as the literal Word of God and as the focus of his teaching
ANDREW MARVELL (1621 - 1678)
- wrote in a great range of genres and styles, claimed both the private worlds of love and religion and the public
worlds of political and satirical poetry and prose
- politically accepted the Restoration, but maintained his own independent vision and belief in religious toleration
- many of his dramatic monologue poems are spoken by named naive personas, as e.g. the Mower or the Nymph
- in many poems explores the human condition in terms of fundamental dichotomies which resist resolution
- religious and philosophical poems deal with the conflict between nature and grace, body and soul, or poetic
creation and sacrifice: "The Cornet" or "The Dialogue Between the Soul and Body"
- love poems focus on the conflict between flesh and spirit, physical sex and platonic love, or idealizing courtship
and the ravages of time: "The Definition of Love" or "To His Coy Mistress"
- pastorals oppose nature and art, the fallen and the Edenic state, or violent passion and contentment: "The Garden"
- his political poems set the traditional order against providential revolutionary change and the goods and costs of
retirement against those of action and war: "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" (1650)
> "Upon Appleton House":
- refers to the period he spent as a tutor to the daughter of Thomas Fairfax at Nunappleton where Fairfax retired
after giving over his command of the Parliamentary army to Cromwell as he was unwilling to invade Scotland
- opposes the attractions of various kinds of retirement to the duties of action and reformation
- adapts the small-scale genre of the country-house poem to an epic-like scope comprising the myth of origin of the
Fairfax family, the experiences of the poet-tutor, and projected future of the daughter of the house, etc.
> "To His Coy Mistress":
- a typically carpe diem poem voiced by a witty and urbane speaker in balanced and artful couplets
- addresses an indecisive lady and presses her to yield before the extinction of passion and its corruption by time
('Had we but World enough and Time, / This coyness Lady were no crime.')
- sees an unconsummated relationship standing frailly against a background of mortality, war, and final Judgement
- briefly, even desperately, holds out the possibility of a physical triumph against the impending change and decay
> "The Garden":
- describes gardens as the source of the symbolic crowns awarded to saints, soldiers, athletes, and poets; as the
source of metaphors for and expression of physical love; and suggests that all passion ends in vegetable life
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- the poem represents an attempt to recapture innocence through meditation and solitude ('a green Thought in a
green shade') and imagines the world as an exclusive paradise possessed by a solitary Adam
SIR JOHN SUCKLING (1609 - 1642)
- his life and work embodies the Cavalier ideal of an aristocratic wit, gallant, lover, soldier, and gamester
- represents the easy, confident, flirtatious, morally lax, and essentially unearnest world of courtly manners
- his poems and songs adopt various stances to the subject of love: cynical debunking of love myths, frank
enjoyment of sensual pleasure, or invitations to love
> Fragmenta Aurea (1646):
- a posthumous collection of his poems, plays, and letters
>> "Against Fruition": claims that the greatest delights of love are in the chase
>> "A Session of the Poets": a witty satire on his contemporaries describing a contest for the post of poet laureate
>> "A Ballad upon a Wedding": a playful epithalamion demystifying the usual celebration of the cosmic and
religious significances of marriage by detailing comic rustic parallels and identifying sex as the great leveller
GEORGE HERBERT (1593 - 1633)
- like J. Donne hesitated for some years before being ordained, but unlike Donne served in a small country parish
- loosely associated with the metaphysical poets, but his style is deceptively simple, marked by ease and grace
- wrote poems of tight construction, exact diction, and perfectly controlled tone
- developed biblical poetics based on the language, metaphors, and symbolism of the Bible
- manifest a great intellectual and emotional range and mastery of a variety of stanzaic forms and rhythmic patterns
- unlike Donne does not voice fears about his salvation but rather focuses on defining his relationship with God
- most often represents his relationship to God as that of friend with friend, though radically unequal in status
- presents the relation of God to man in terms of a hierarchical society based on obligation both by duty and love
- exercised a major influence on the religious lyric poets of the Caroline age: R. Crashaw, H. Vaughan, T. Traherne
> The Temple (1633):
- his single volume of religious poetry
>> "The Church-Porch": a long prefatory poem
>> "Church Militant": a long concluding poem
>> The Church: the title for nearly two hundred short lyrics, including sonnets, songs, hymns, laments, meditative
poems, dialogue poems, acrostic poems, emblematic poems, and other verse enclosed by the two long poems above
- the unifying motif of the volume is the biblical metaphor of the New Testament temple in the human heart
- often agonizes over the necessary inability of a Christian poet to praise God adequately: "The Altar" or "Easter"
- some dialogue poems are resolved by the voice of a divine friend heard within: "The Collar"
- many poems treat church liturgy, architecture, and art: "Church Monuments" or "The Windows"
- some poems are related to religious emblems and present image and picture at once (i.e. are shaped on the page so
as to resemble the object dealt with in the poem): "The Altar" or "Easter Wings"
>> "The Collar":
- evokes resistance to service which is finally put an end to in response to the steady call of Christ
>> "Affliction":
- describes a changing understanding of service to a lord, which is first rewarding, then seemingly disappointing
- at all times insists on an obligation shaped by duty as well as the more pressing demands of love
>> "Love III":
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- the concluding poem of the volume, a colloquy personifying God as Love who welcomes the sinner to his feast,
insistently answering each protest of unworthiness with a gentle assertion of his grace
- entertains the uneasy guest and the would-be servant as equals
RICHARD CRASHAW (c. 1613 - 1649)
- the only major representative of the continental baroque
- the baroque style is exuberant, rhetorical, florid, sensuous, and elaborately ornamented
- renders the spiritual though the senses, uses sensuous metaphors for religious themes
- his favourite subjects are angels and cherubs, the infant Jesus, the bloody wounds of the saviour, the suffering of
the Virgin, the tears of the penitent Magdalene, the agonies of martyrs, etc.
- originally served as Anglican priest, but converted to Roman Catholicism for the last four years of his life
- his poetry was influenced by the poetics of the Catholic Counter-Reformation
- his chief influence was G. Herbert, which is reflected in very the title of his collection Steps to the Temple
> Epigrammatica Sacra (1634):
- a collection of Latin epigrams showing the influence of the Jesuit epigram style
- marked by sophisticated rhetoric, puns, paradoxes, antitheses, metallic wit, and sometimes grotesque metaphors
> Steps to the Temple (1646, expanded 1648):
- his two collections of sacred poems published under the same title
> The Delight of the Muses (1646):
- his collection of secular poems
>> "Music's Duel":
- a much elaborated version of an earlier work by a Jesuit poet about the contest of a nightingale and a lutenist
- imitates musical sounds by liquid vowels, smooth syntax, sound repetitions, and onomatopoeia
- creates the effect of continual metamorphosis by using synaesthesia, i.e. the collapsing of one sense into another
- renders the experience of religious ecstasy
HENRY VAUGHAN (1621 - 1695)
- his Welsh origin is reflected in his poetic language of assonance, consonance, and alliteration, in his consistent
use of natural imagery, and in his sensitiveness to landscape
> Silex Scintillans (The Flashing Flint, 1650, expanded 1655):
- his major collection of religious verse
- the title is explicated by an emblem of a flint-like heart struck by a bolt of lightning from the hand of God
- the choice of the flint derives from a Latin pun on 'silex' and on the ancient British tribe of 'Silures' from which he
claimed descent, referring to himself as 'The Silurist'
- indebted to G. Herbert, which is reflected in a multitude of Herbertian echoes, allusions, and quotations
- differs from Herbert's artful precision in his own long, loose, free-flowing poetic line
- the underlying motif of the collection is a pilgrimage of a solitary wanderer mourning his lost innocence(9) JOHN
MILTON (1608 - 1674)
LIFE
- educated at St Paul's and at Cambridge which he entered with the intention to become an ordained priest
- gave up the career of priesthood for the lack of reformation and the corruption he found in the Church of England
- undertook a six-year programme of self-directed study of the western literary and intellectual heritage
- studied ancient and modern languages, theology, philosophy, history, science, politics, and literature
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- commanded a number of languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch
- undertook a 'grand tour' of France, Italy, and Switzerland at the time of the civil wars in England (1638 - 39)
- on return to England opened a school, then served as a Latin secretary to the Commonwealth Government (1649 53) and to Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate (1654 - 58), which involved writing official letters to foreign states
- married unhappily to a young woman who left him a few months after marriage (1641), returned to him several
years later (1645), but died in childbirth after another couple of years (1652), the same year he became totally blind
- his second wife died two years after he married her along with their infant daughter (1658), finally his third wife
(1663), who survived him, provided him domestic comfort in his worsening health and reduced circumstances
- on the Restoration of Charles II was briefly imprisoned, but his friends, especially the poet Andrew Marvell,
managed his pardon and his release from prison
VIEWS
- actively participated in public political and religious affairs, proclaimed himself a self-appointed prophetic bard
- devoted his life to public causes, but his understanding of those cause often arose out of personal concerns
- wrote successively on church government, divorce, education, freedom of the press, regicide, and republicanism
ON RELIGION
- remained faithful to the Puritan cause despite the repression Puritan dissenters faced after the Restoration
- involved in Presbyterian efforts to depose the bishops and reform Church liturgy, wrote five anti-episcopal tracts
(between 1643 and 1645) attacking both the idea and the supposed enormities of English episcopacy
> Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline (1641):
- argues against the Anglican compromise, charges bishops for propping up an incompletely reformed church and
for precipitating a war between England and Scotland
> The Reason of Church Government (1642):
- one of his five anti-episcopal tracts, contains digressions on his own life, education, and development
> Christian Doctrine:
- an unpublished Latin treatise summarizing his later highly radical and unorthodox religious views
- denies the Trinity by making Christ and the Holy Spirit much inferior to God the Father, insists upon free will
against the Calvinist predestination, and privileges the inspiration of the Spirit over the Scriptures
ON MARRIAGE
- wrote four tracts advocating divorce on the grounds of incompatibility and with the right to remarry
> The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, revised 1644):
- draws extensively on arguments from history, theology, and Scripture and claims that an unhappy marriage makes
for a kind of chaos which stands against God's order in creation
ON CENSORSHIP
> Areopagitica (1644):
- written in response to the fact that his tracts on divorce were not licensed by the Parliament for publication
- argues for a free press against a predominantly Presbyterian Parliament determined to restore effective censorship
- draws a parallel between the persecution of heretics by the unreformed Church and the suppression of ideas by the
Protestant state, comparing both actions to an unlawful murder
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- the title is inspired by the Areopagus, i.e. the site of meetings of the state council in ancient Athens
ON POLITICS
> The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649):
- comments on the execution of Charles I (1649) and argues for the propriety of bringing a tyrant to account and
putting him to death
> The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660):
- the last work to defend the 'good old cause' of the Revolution, appeared only two weeks before the Restoration
- proposes the establishment of a council of ablest representatives chosen by the people to guard the new republic
- argues for a free and emphatically Protestant Commonwealth which would preserve civil and religious liberty,
introduces the idea of federalism based on county assemblies subordinate to a national parliament
> History of Britain (probably written in the late 1640s, published 1670):
- covers the period from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest and bemoans the failure of both Britons and
Saxons to maintain and defend their ancient liberties
POETRY
- self-consciously modelled his career on the Roman poet Virgil, beginning with pastoral and ending with epic
- influenced by E. Spenser whom he most closely resembles in his use of myth and archetype, and his blending of
biblical and classical stories
- introduced new subjects for the sonnet, the form traditionally dealing with love: praise of Cromwell and the new
republic, the struggle to come to terms with his blindness as part of God's providence, etc.
> Poems of Mr John Milton, both English and Latin, Composed at Several Times (1645):
- his first collected volume of verse covering some fifteen years of his experiment with English and Latin metres
> "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (written in 1629):
- a devotional hymn in which he also first proclaims himself a prophetic bard
- presents the birth of Jesus as that of a wondrous divine sovereign who extinguishes the power of the pagan gods
- stresses the cosmic rather than human aspect of the event
> "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" (probably 1655):
- a sonnet calling down God's vengeance for Protestants massacred by the Duke of Savoy in Piedmont, Italy (1655)
> "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" (probably 1658):
- a sonnet presenting a moving dream-vision poignant with the sense of loss, both of sight and of love
- probably addressed to his late second wife
> Comus (first published anonymously in 1637):
- an occasional mask for performance at the official residence of a newly appointed Lord President of Wales
- the version revised for publication emphasizes the word rather than music, dance, or spectacle
- the mask establishes what proved to be a lasting professional interest in the nature and force of temptation and in
the character and motivation of a tempter
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> Lycidas (published 1638):
- a pastoral elegy on the death by drowning of his Cambridge contemporary Edward King (1637)
- moulded by his disillusion with the Church of England, charges the corrupt Anglican clergy for failure in duty
- also expresses his sense of poetic mission, contemplates poetry as a vocation
- the title is taken from the Greek bucolic poet Theocritus and means 'the best of pipers'
- echoes classical pastoral poetry, but in form adapts the current Italian canzone for English
- blends elements of the pagan and the Christian, intermixes gods and saints, nymphs and angels
- moves from grieving through stoic acceptance of loss to an assertion of a hope for the Christian Resurrection
> Paradise Lost (1667, revised 1674):
- moves from a meditation on the political disappointments in England to an epic treatment of man's fall
- explores the consequences of man's first disobedience and humankind's failure to live according to divine order
- the prophecy of St Michael to Adam makes clear that the course of human history will be tragic until the Second
Coming of Christ, yet throughout history God will raise up prophets and heroes to resists corruption and tyranny
- defines Adam's final wisdom not by his knowledge of good and evil but by his willingness to accept obedience
- urges obedience to the behest implicit in the creative order of an omnipotent God, but also asserts the ultimate
justness of a loving God's 'eternal providence'
- prompts certain assumptions but in an essentially Puritan way insists on a reader's freedom of interpretation
- radically reconceives the epic genre and epic heroism in choosing as protagonists a domestic couple rather than
martial heroes and degrading the military glory in favour 'of patience and heroic martyrdom'
- the poem is set in the garden of Eden, in Heaven whose light is characterized as the blazing and blinding
perfection of an unseen but imagined Godhead, and in Hell whose lack of light is described as 'darkness visible'
- echoes older epics and uses extended similes or idioms derived from Greek and Latin, which helps him to forge a
new, sustained, variable, weighty, and to some extent artificial language appropriate to his ambitious scheme
> Paradise Regained (1671):
- a brief epic in four books concerned with the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness
- remarkable for its presentation of arguments, in Satan's intellectual and sensual assaults and Christ's reasoned
responses to them juxtaposes different ideologies, ways of seeing, thinking, reading, interpreting, and believing
- presents the temptation as a difficult intellectual struggle through which the hero comes to understand himself and
his mission and defeats Satan by renouncing all the false or faulty versions of the good life
> Samson Agonistes (published 1671):
- a classical tragedy, closely follows the tree unities of time, place, and action, and puts emphasis on the chorus
- concerned with the ruined and blinded Samson, the failed hero of Israel, and his slow enlightenment which finally
reconciles him to the benign purposes of God
- Samson dies, but in his death triumphs over his captors and offers his people a chance to regain their freedom(10)
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
NEW GENRES
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY
- numerous diaries, memoirs, and journals kept by individuals newly emerge
- autobiographies were encouraged by Protestant and especially Puritan directives to keep an account of events of
spiritual significance for each day and to meditate on them
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> Margaret Cavendish's (1623 - 73) personal autobiography A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life
(1656) introduces as a speaker a close version of the author
> Sir Thomas Browne's (1605 - 82) intellectual autobiography Religio Medici (1643) contains as a speaker a
carefully constructed persona
- earlier biographies were constructed as spiritual works dealing with conversion or providential experiences
> Thomas More's (c. 1477 - 1535) The History of King Richard III (1557)
> Izaak Walton's (1593 - 1683) several Lives (e.g. The Life and Death of Dr Donne, 1640, revised 1658)
introduced new sophistication and completeness, while still bearing the imprint of the old model of the saint's life
ESSAY AND TREATISE
- inspired by Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 92), a French author of the witty, intimate, and reflective familiar essay
> Francis Bacon's (1561 - 1626) final edition of Essays (1625) adjusts the French essay to present the society's
accumulated practical wisdom from the point of the man trying to make his way in the world
> Robert Burton's (1577 - 1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) introduces the genre of a massive, detailed,
comprehensive treatise
- shorter essays and longer treatises democratized prose, using it not only to represent but also to radically reform
the institutions of the social world, as the church, state, universities, family, etc.
EARLIER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
FRANCIS BACON (1561 - 1626)
- followed a brilliant public career, studied law, served as a member of Parliament, and was finally appointed lord
chancellor, i.e. the highest judicial post
- towards the end of his life (1621) was convicted of corruption and accepting bribes in a partly politically
motivated charge and was forced from office, but frankly admitted that he did take bribes, as everyone else did
- played a central role in developing the English essay and English prose styles, also inaugurated the genre of the
scientific utopia in his fictional The New Atlantis (1626) and created the myth of science as pathway to utopia
> Essays (1597, 1612, 1625):
- contrasts with M. de Montaigne's candid first person essayistic style in rarely using the first person, presenting
himself rather as a mouthpiece for society's accumulated practical wisdom, and retaining a cool objectivity in tone
- the first edition is highly aphoristic in structure, resembles a collection of maxims placed in sequence, but the later
two edition are longer and looser, use more figurative language, and are more unified
- focuses on the issues of practical morality, politics, social theory, and the theory of knowledge
> The Advancement of Learning (1605 in English, 1623 expanded in Latin):
- believes in a progressive development of human learning, aims to advance it through experiment and induction
- names the obstacles to the advancement, which include rhetoric (a study of words rather than of things), medieval
Scholastics (reliance on a barren rationalism), and the pseudo-sciences of astrology and alchemy
- attempts to separate theology and science as two equally valid truths, one based on faith, the other on reason
> Novum Organum (The New Instrument, 1620):
- written in Latin, the title challenges Aristotle's Organon, then still the basis of university education, with its heavy
reliance on deduction, and suggests induction as the new instrument for the advancement of learning
- argues for a new method of scientific thinking, free of the prejudices of the past and the affections of the present
- defines four kinds of idols to which we give false worship: the tribe, the cave, the market place, and the theatre
ROBERT BURTON (1577 - 1640)
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> The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):
- an encyclopaedic treatise in English on a psychological malady Burton thought universal
- stresses the lapsed state of humankind and the susceptibility of the human mind to the unbalancing melancholia
- the author styles himself as 'Democritus Junior' in the preface, adopting the role of the Greek satirist Democritus
- draws on a mass of ancient and modern authority, cites more than a thousand of named authors
- writes in a digressive, loose, and galloping style, intermixes science, philosophy, poetry, history, and divinity
THOMAS HOBBES (1588 - 1679)
- an adherent of the materialist philosophy: everything is composed only of matter, spirit does not exist, and all
knowledge is based on sensory impressions, which are but matter in motion
> Leviathan (1651):
- the most important work of English political theory to appear up to that time
- grounds its political vision on a comprehensive philosophy of nature and of knowledge
- claims that human beings seek self-preservation as a primary goal and seek power as the means to secure that goal
- the natural human condition is a continual state of war of every man against every man
- to avoid this war and to secure survival, humans covenant with each other to establish one absolute sovereign who
keeps them all in awe and incorporates all the wills and persons below him in a single sovereign will
- the title refers to the primordial sea creature from the Book of Job who is analogous both to God and to Satan and
whom Hobbes takes as figure for the sovereign power in the state
SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605 - 1682)
- his English prose style is polysyllabic and Latinate, mixes wit and rhetoric, rises often to a resonant poetry
> Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor, authorized version published in 1643):
- an intellectual autobiography: neither tells a story of conversion nor reports the facts of his life, rather gives an
exercise in delighted self-analysis and self-portrayal
- constructs a curious and engaging persona of a genial, tolerant, and speculative doctor who offers his personal and
sometimes eccentric views on a wide variety of topics pertaining to religious doctrine and practice
- his views are moulded by common sense, pragmatism, and an exemplary religious tolerance
- writes as a well-informed and experimental physician who finds his religious faith confirmed by his scientific awe
- presents himself as a model Anglican, setting his example against the efforts of the reforming Puritans eager to rid
the church of its errors
> Pseudodoxia Epidemica (also known as Vulgar Errors, 1646):
- a Baconian treatise analysing the causes of popular errors in various fields and the authors who perpetuate them
> Hydrotaphia, or Urn-Burial (1658) and The Garden of Cyrus (1658):
- the latter is named after the Persian emperor who supposedly constructed the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- both are loose archaeological studies which interrelate ancient custom, a fascination with form and development,
and a pervasive awareness of mortality
- the phenomena of death and decay are closely related to the significance of religious rites and religious comfort
LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
JOHN LOCKE (1632 - 1704)
- an adherent of Deism, i.e. a belief in the existence of God who created the world but does not intervene in its run
> An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690):
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- explores the human mind in general by closely watching one particular mind
- finds out that ideas are clear when they are based on direct experience and adequate when they are clear, but
highly problematic when they do not refer to anything determinate
- rejects innate ideas in favour of the notion of knowledge based on the experience of external sensation, describes
the mind at birth as a tabula rasa, a 'white paper... without any ideas'
- claims that words are signs not of things, but of ideas, and language is a creation of society which consents to the
fact that certain words stand for certain ideas
- concludes that people should discard from their minds any ideas that cannot be reduced to clear determinate form,
and so banishes the mysteries of faith which are essential to religion
> Two Treatises of Government (1689, 1690):
- emphasizes that civil societies are bonded together by an enlightened self-interest, that government exists as a
trust conferred upon it by the consent of citizens, and if that trust be abused, citizens have a right to overthrow it
SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642 - 1727)
- revolutionized the study of mechanics and physics with three basics laws of motion
- designed the first reflecting telescope and explained why the sky looks blue
- famously discovered the universal law of gravity
- presented his results in treatises written in Latin
> Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687):
- made possible the modern understanding of the cosmos
> Opticks (1704):
- presented his discoveries about light and colour
- discovered that light is not homogeneous, but a compound of heterogeneous rays
- explained that white is not the absence of colour but a composite of all sorts of colour(11 - 20) GENERAL
BACKGROUND TO BRITISH LITERATURE FROM 1660 TO 1790
CHRONOLOGY
1659:
Abdication of Richard Cromwell
1660:
Return of Charles Stuart to England and his restoration to the English throne as Charles II
1666:
The Great Fire of London
1673:
The Test Act excluded Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics from public life
> Samuel Butler's caricature of Presbyterians and Independents in Hudibras (1662)
1678:
The Popish Plot supposedly planned the murder of Protestants by their Catholic foes
- the House of Commons attempted to force Charles II to exclude his Catholic brother James from
succession to the throne, but the King reacted by dissolving the Parliament
> John Dryden's portrayal of the tumultuous period in Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
- two opposing political parties emerged: the conservative Tories (represented by the landed gentry
and country clergy) who supported the Crown and the Anglican Church, and the progressive Whigs
(merchants, financiers, low-church clergymen) who supported commerce
1685:
Reign of the Catholic James II
1688 - 89: The Glorious Revolution: deposition of James II and accession of the Protestant Dutchman William
of Orange
- emergence of Jacobites, especially in Scotland, who supported James II, his son the Old Pretender
and his grandson the Bonnie Prince Charlie as the legitimate rules of Britain
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1702 - 14:
1707:
1714 - 60:
Reign of Queen Anne
Act of Union unites Scotland and England, which thus become Great Britain
Rule by House of Hanover: George I (reign 1714 - 27) and George II (reign 1727 - 60)
- neither of the German kings took interest in British affairs, the ministers gain more importance
1721 - 42: Prime Minister Robert Walpole
> John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728), Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild (1743) and Alexander Pope's
Dunciad (1728) criticize the Prime Minister's controlling of the House of Commons by buying off its
members
1737:
Licensing Act censors the stage
1745:
The Jacobite Rising, an unsuccessful campaign attempting to restore the Stuart kings to the throne
1760 - 1820: Reign of George II
1780:
Gordon Riots in London
1783:
Prime Minister William Pitt
SOCIETY AND PHILOSOPHY
- the nation grew increasingly prosperous through an aggressive marked economy, newly annexed colonies, a
lucrative slave trade, the beginnings of industrialism etc.
> common interests linked the British Isles: Ireland produced Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Richard Sheridan
and Oliver Goldsmith, Scotland produced James Thomson, David Hume and James Boswell
- Scepticism: pessimistic view of human nature
> Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) emphasizes the predatory passions in human nature and society
- Empiricism: all knowledge derives from experience, but our senses do not report the world accurately, therefore
it is impossible to achieve a reliable knowledge
> Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), John Locke (1632 - 1704), George Berkeley (1685 - 1753), David Hume (1711 1776)
> Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man (1734) warns among others against human presumption
- Sentimentalism: the doctrine of natural goodness of man produced a cult of sensibility and rise of philanthropy
> Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
- Methodism: an evangelical revival brining the gospel to common people, warning them they were all sinners and
damned, unless they accepted the amazing grace of salvation through faith
> John Wesley (1703 - 1791), Charles Wesley (1707 - 1788), George Whitefield (1714 - 1770)
LITERATURE
- Augustan: an analogy of post-civil war England to Augustan Rome, the age of stability after the civil war that
followed the assassination of Caesar
- Neoclassical: re-creations and translations of classical Greek and Roman literature; holding to the tradition of the
classical literary principles, e.g. the genres of epic, tragedy, comedy, pastoral, satire or ode
< influenced by French literature as well as French fashions which were brought over to England by Charles II
(1) Restoration Literature 1660 - 1700, i.e. from the Restoration to the death of Dryden: an effort to bring a new
refinement according to sound critical principles of what is fitting and right
(2) Literature of the First Half of the 18th Century, i.e. from 1700 to the deaths of Pope in 1744 and Swift in 1745: a
special satirical attention to what is unfitting and wrong
(3) Literature of the Second Half of the 18th Century, i.e. from 1745 to the death of Johnson in 1784 and the
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publication of Cowper's The Task in 1785: confrontation of the old principles with revolutionary ideas(11)
RESTORATION DRAMA
DRAMA:
- the prominent genre during the Restoration
- before the Restoration, playhouses were closed by the Puritans (1642 - 1660), officially because of the plague, but
the Puritans objected against dressing up on the stage
- Charles II imported French manners from the court of Louis XIV, licensed two new companies of actors, the
King's Players and the Duke's, and initiated a short-lived growth of the theatre
- the audience was upper-class only, i.e. royalty, aristocracy and landed gentry
- to meet the new demand for drama, new plays were written in haste, old plays were stitched and remade
COMEDY:
- reflected the spirit of a fun-loving, dissolute court
- dominated by witty, bawdy comedies of manners written and acted by men as well as women
- written to satisfy the taste of predominantly male audience: sexual escapades, adventurous exploits of aristocratic
men, marriage as punishment etc.
- typically feature sensual, false-hearted, selfish characters who pray on each other, and male characters living for
pleasure, money and women
- the cynical tone corresponds to Thomas Hobbes's philosophy which sees human beings as predatory creatures and
emotions as but chemical processes
- the flourishing of Restoration comedy was short-lived, lasted but forty years
> Jeremy Collier's A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) harshly criticizes
the contemporary theatre, specifically the comedy, and anticipates a turn away from cynicism to sentimentality in
the 18th century plays
SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE (c. 1634 - 1691)
The Comical Revenge: or Love in a Tub (1664):
- a comedy with a double plot in the earlier 17th century manner
- one plot features the amatory rivalry of two gentlemen and is written in couplets, another focuses on the exploits
of an English aristocrat and his French valet and is written in prose
She would if she could (1668):
- a comedy of hypocrisy and double standards
- a middle-aged country lady frantically courts adultery despite her front of prudish respectability, but two London
libertine gentlemen find satisfaction in the arms of the lady's younger kinswomen
- suggest that older lovers are implicitly ridiculous, while young women of good society are the proper prey of men
The Man of Mode (1676):
- his most amusing and best-crafted comedy
- contrasts two English gentlemen, models of merriment, cleverness and sexual irresistibility, and a Frenchified fool
who fails where they win
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY (1641 - 1715)
- wrote comedies accentuating the artificiality of the stage and mirroring the sheen of the society that produced it
- suggested that high society's cultivation of the superficial elevated wit and politeness above personal decency
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- used satiric mode, but was amused rather than disgusted by dubious morals and avoided explicit moral judgement
The Country Wife (1675):
- Horner, a greedy, sensual and lustful libertarian, spreads the news of his impotence in order to be able to enjoy the
attention of unguarded wives
- Horner escapes any kind of retribution, on the contrary, he exposes the pretensions of other characters to contempt
The Plain Dealer (1676):
- in part an adaptation of Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), featuring a world-hating protagonist
- the ambiguous protagonist neither adopts the pretentious standards of society, nor does he reject them
- ends up romantically with his delivery into the arms of a honest lady
APHRA BEHN (1640 - 1689)
- the first professional woman of letters, becoming so of economic necessity
- little is know about her life, but that she was a subject of ill reputation
- flourished in the cosmopolitan world of the theatre and the court, enjoyed her public role immodestly
- kept up with advanced thinking, joined public debates, commented freely on religion, science and philosophy
- scorned convention, hypocrisy and calculation in her society
- denied the classical education of most male authors, relished the immediate human appeal of popular forms
- drew on a range of worldly experience that would be closed to a respectable woman
- wrote as a woman: concerned with women's feelings, their schooling in disguise, their need to love
- versatile in many genres: plays, prose writings, occasional royalist verse, translations from the French etc.
The Forced Marriage (1670):
- her first comedy, exposing the bondage of matches arranged for money and status
- invokes the powerful natural force of love whose energy breaks through artificial conventions
The Rover (1677 - 1681):
- a comedy featuring exiled cavaliers, i.e. supporters of king Charles I during the English Civil War (1642 - 1651)
- the flamboyant male protagonist wins his true love and bitterly disappoints his former courtesan whom he leaves
The Roundheads (1681 - 1682):
- a chaotic comedy showing her antipathy to Puritanism and its political allies
- features two wives of prominent Puritans wooed by two cavaliers and interconnects pimping and politicking
Oroonoko, or the History of the Royal Slave (1688):
- a novel mingling fact and fiction, realism and romance
- follows the destiny of a morally upright African prince who is betrayed into American slavery
SIR JOHN VANBRUGH (1664 - 1726)
- now better known as a flamboyantly inventive architect than as a dramatist
- collaborated on some eleven plays and adaptations, on his own authored but two plays
- notable for whimsical plots and colloquial comic dialogue
The Relapse; or Virtue in Danger (1696)
The Provoked Wife (1697)
WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670 - 1729)
The Old Bachelor (1691):
- his successful first play, declared the best dramatic début by John Dryden
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The Double Dealer (1693):
- an unsuccessful play, though inspired Dryden to write a poem praising Congreve as a superior dramatist
Love for Love (1695):
- an again successful comedy
The Way of the World (1700):
- now considered his most elegant comedy, but failed with the audience, which made the author give up the stage
- notable for epigrammatic and brilliant dialogue, intricate and puzzling plot and surprisingly complex characters
- follows the standard plot beginning with the struggle for power, sex, and money and ending with a marriage
- allows for both true wit and genuine feeling, for social satire and for the establishment of marital alliances based
on tenderness rather than convenience
- the author exposes the weakness of those who treat love as a war or a game and makes generosity, affection and
true love conquer in the play
GEORGE FARQUHAR (c. 1677 - 1707)
- originally an actor, but accidentally gravely injured a fellow actor on the stage, gave up acting and left to London
- encouraged to writing by his friend, the actor Robert Wilks, produced a succession of bright, rattling comedies
- represents the transition between the licentiousness of Restoration drama and the sentimentality of the 18 th century
Love and a Bottle (1698):
- concerned with a wild Irishman who escapes to London to avoid marriage with his lover pregnant with twins
The Recruiting Officer (1706):
- inspired by the author's own recruiting experience
- on the social and sexual exploits of two officers in a recruiting town
The Beaux-Stratagem (1707):
- written during his final illness, may have been inspired by the author's own experience when he was cheated into
a marriage by a widow with three children pretending to be in possession of a fortune
- a witty contemporary satire on the social issues of status, money, and marriage and their interdependence
- follows the exploits of two young men who pretend to be gentlemen of money and status to find themselves
wealthy brides
- concludes with one of the man's giving up his disguise under the influence of his honest bride and so gestures
towards the sentimentality and emphasis on natural virtue in the plays of the following period
TRAGEDY:
- a minor genre, still written in verse
- concerned with things greater than life, with superior characters and heroic actions
- of older plays mostly Shakespeare, John Fletcher and Ben Jonson were performed, especially Shakespeare was
frequently rewritten
NAHUM TATE (1652 - 1715)
History of King Lear (1681):
- rewrites Shakespeare's King Lear (1608) introducing a love plot for Edgar and Cordelia and a happy ending
JOHN DRYDEN (1631 - 1700)
All for Love (1677):
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- a blank verse adaptation of the story of Antony and Cleopatra, which claims to imitate 'the Divine Shakespeare'
- decorously tides up Shakespeare's complexities of plot in conformity with neoclassical canons
THOMAS OTWAY (1652 - 1685)
- fascinated with the dilemmas of the great in antique or exotic settings
- wrote high-flown and declamatory tragedies pathetically showing suffering, emotional conflict and intrigue
The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1680):
- loosely adapts elements from the story of Romeo and Juliet in a charged Roman Republican setting
Venice Preserved, or A Plot Discovered (1682):
- features a noble protagonist torn by opposed loyalties
WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670 - 1729)
The Mourning Bride (1697):
- a Spanish tragedy(12) RESTORATION POETRY AND PROSE
POETRY
- the court of Charles II was, despite its cloak of Anglican conformity, open to sexual, religious, and verbal licence
- the change of mood was evident also in the reaction against the two older fashions, the intellectual school of John
Donne and the morally serious Puritan writing
- courtier poets (e.g. Earl of Rochester) wrote with wit, profanity, and ribaldry, which were to the taste of the king
- some other poets (e.g. John Dryden) attempted to bring a new refinement according to sound critical principles
- satirical poets (e.g. Samuel Butler) flourished, feeding on the contradictions, ironies, and hypocrisies of society
JOHN DRYDEN (1631 - 1700)
LIFE AND CAREER
- the commanding literary figure of the last four decades of the 17th century, commenting on virtually every aspect
of the political, religious, philosophical, and artistic life
- the least emotional of poets, wrote occasional social and ceremonial poems to celebrate or commemorate
particular events of public life, as a coronation, military victory, death, political crisis, etc.
- appointed Poet Laureate by Charles II (1668), but due to his conversion to Roman Catholicism (1686, under the
reign of the Catholic James II) suffered decline of fortune and persecution under the Protestant William of Orange
PUBLIC POETRY
- represents the best of the Augustan style: his poetry is dignified, precise, but also lively and musical
- models his vision of Britain under the restored Stuarts on the example of the Imperial Rome of Augustus
> Heroic Stanzas (1659):
- commemorates the death of Oliver Cromwell
> Astraea Redux (1660):
- in contrast to the former celebrates the return of Charles II to whom and to whose successor James II Dryden
remained loyal for the rest of his life
> Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666 (1667):
- a 'historical' poem referring to the events of the year 1666, marked by war, plague, and the Great Fire of London
- celebrates the naval victory over the Dutch and the fortitude of the Londoners and the king during the Great Fire
- interprets the events as trials sent by God to punish rebels, to bind the king and his people together, and to offer a
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pledge of better times to come
- presents a vision of the king who shall arise like a new Augustus, the ruler of a great empire, and of London
which shall arise out of fire like the phoenix, ready to take its place as trade centre for the world
> A Song for St Cecilia's Day (1687) and Alexander's Feast (1697):
- odes on St Cecilia, both later attracted the attention of the musical composer Handel
> Britannia Rediviva (1688):
- a public ode celebrating the birth of the heir of James II
DRAMA
- after the Restoration wrote plays for the newly opened theatres, mostly to earn money and to please his audience
- produced both tragedies and comedies, later also libretti for the newly introduced dramatic form of the opera
- complied to the classical principles of the Greek and Roman drama, including the preservation of the three
unities, and presentation of aristocratic heroes in tragedy and lower-class rakes in comedy
> All for Love (1677):
- a blank verse tragedy which adapts Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra to the unities of time, place, and action
LITERARY CRITICISM
- most of his critical essays appeared as prefaces to his own books
- set the canons of taste and theoretical principle as a standard for the next generation
- came to be called 'the father of English criticism' by the later writer Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
> Of Dramatic Poesy, An Essay (1668):
- written at the time of enforced theatrical inactivity during the Plague of 1665
- seeks sounds theoretical principles on which to construct the new English drama
- takes the form of a conversation between four characters who defend their different views of drama
- studies the ancient drama of Greece and Rome, and the modern drama of contemporary England and France
VERSE SATIRE
- wrote formal satires in the heroic couplet, which influenced the most brilliant satirist of the next century, A. Pope
> Mac Flecknoe (composed 1678 or 1679, published 1682):
- a mock-heroic satire occasioned by a quarrel with the popular rival playwright Thomas Shadwell (?1642 - 1692)
- expresses his bitter distaste for Shadwell's flippant plays and rages at the deathliness of human stupidity in general
> Absalom and Achitophel (1681):
- a political satire occasioned by the Popish Plot (1678) and its aftermath
- a witty intermixture of reasoned argument, refined technique, and invective
- satirizes the treasonable acts of Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, and his main abettor, the
Earl of Shaftesbury, in attempting to exclude legally from the succession the King's Catholic brother, Duke of York
- takes as model the biblical story of the rebellion of Absalom against his father David, draws parallels between
Absalom and Monmouth, Achitophel and Shaftesbury, Saul and Cromwell, Pharaoh and Louis XIV of France, etc.
- the main villain is Achitophel who is presented as the Satanic tempter of the honourably gullible Absalom
> The Medal (1682):
- a further devastating attack on the Earl of Shaftesbury
RELIGIOUS WRITINGS
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> Religio Laici, or A Layman's Faith (1682):
- examines the grounds of his Anglican faith and defends the middle way of the Anglican Church against the
rationalism of Deism on one hand and the authoritarianism of Rome on the other
> The Hind and the Panther (1687):
- written from the perspective of a converted Roman Catholic
- an allegorical animal fable in which a white hind (the Roman Church) and a spotted panther (the Anglican
Church) eloquently discuss theology, the hind having the better arguments
TRANSLATIONS
- his translations made many classics available to readers who lacked a classical education
> The Works of Virgil (1697)
> Fables Ancient and Modern (1700):
- collected translations from Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer
- the preface expresses his sense of his own patriotic mission as a poet and suggests that he saw himself as standing
in the vernacular apostolic line beginning, as he claims, with Chaucer, following with Spenser, and then Milton
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER (1647 - 1680)
- the most brilliant Restoration heir to the courtier poetry of Lovelace, Suckling, and Carew
- rearticulates Cavalier gallantry through the exercise of an indulgent world-weariness
- interfuses tenderness and cynicism, domesticity and debauchery, quick wit and meditative seriousness
> "Upon Drinking in a Bowl":
- proclaims Cupid and Bacchus his patron saints
> "An Age in her Embraces Past":
- hedonistically holds on to what enjoyments the present moment offers
> "A Satyr against Mankind" (1675):
- exposes the falseness of all human pretension to honesty, virtue, wisdom, and valour
- undercuts the role of human reason and presents a victim of the presumption to rationality who is finally led to
recognize the error into which he has fallen
- shows human life as a jungle in which creatures prey on one another and in which fear is the stimulus to action
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- numerous diaries, memoirs, and journals kept by individuals newly emerge in the second half of the 17th century
- autobiographies were encouraged by Protestant and especially Puritan directives to keep an account of events of
spiritual significance for each day and to meditate on them
- the increase is inscribed both to the rise of bourgeois individualism and a concomitant interest in self-analysis
- as a form of self-expression open both to men and to women, both to aristocracy (e.g. Margaret Cavendish) and to
middle-class (e.g. Samuel Pepys)
MARGARET CAVENDISH (1623 - 1673)
- wrote and published numerous works in a great variety of genres during the Interregnum and Restoration era
- her works elicited more derision than praise, it was considered disgraceful for an aristocratic woman to write
- her person also attracted much attention with her fantastic dress, occasionally idiosyncratic social behaviour, etc.
> Poems and Fancies (1653): a collection of poems
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> Philosophical Fancies (1653): a collection of essays
> Nature's Pictures (1656): short fiction
> The Blazing World (1666): an utopian romance
> The Life of William Cavendish (1667): a biography of her husband
> The Forced Marriage (1670): a theatre play
> A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656):
- an autobiography describing the circumstances of her own life: was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, spent
fifteen years in exile on the continent with her husband, and after the Restoration regained her status and fortune
- defends her right to publish and to participate in the contemporary intellectual exchange, defends women's
rational powers, and criticizes the exclusion of women from education and from the public domain
SAMUEL PEPYS (1633 - 1703)
- worked all his life in various administrative offices in which he achieved some success
- as a London to his core he was interested in all the activities of the city, including the theatre, music, society,
business, religion, literature, and the scientific experiments of the Royal Society (which he presided for two years)
- throughout his life indulged his two obsessions, namely money making and women chasing
> Diary (published 1825):
- kept for nine years, starting with the Restoration in 1660 and ending in 1669 when he thought he was losing sight
- written in shorthand and sometimes in code
- comments with utter frankness on the events of both public and his private life
- as a document of social history unsurpassed for its rich detail, honesty, and immediacy
JOHN BUNYAN (1628 - 1688)
> Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666):
- a spiritual autobiography showing the way by which a sinner is led by God's grace through the agonies of spiritual
crisis to a new birth and the assurance of salvation
- records his transformation into an eloquent and fearless Baptist preacher, such preachers being common
phenomena among the religious sects in Commonwealth, requiring no education or ordination but the inner call
- as an unlicensed Non-conformist preacher endured long terms of imprisonment, wrote most of his works in prison
- intended his autobiography not only as a private process of self-examination but as a means of inspiriting others
> The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come (1678, Part II, 1684):
- an allegory elaborating on the basic metaphor of life as a journey
- makes the personal spiritual pilgrimage of his autobiography an universally shared experience
- describes the journey from the City of Destruction to the Heavenly City undertaken by the characters called
Christian, Faithful, and Hopeful
- the pilgrims are tempted by the evil characters, including Mr Worldly-Wiseman, Hypocrisy, or No-Good, and
must face the dangers of the Slough of Despond, the Castle of Giant Despair, or the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- uses homely and commonplace objects (e.g. the highway, shortcuts, steep hill) charged with spiritual significance
- models his style on the prose of the Bible, but uses concrete language easily accessible even to the simplest reader
- achieved an immense success and became a household book next only to the Bible, owned and read by everyone
> The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680):
- an allegory which is often thought of as an early experiment in realist fiction or as a proto-novel
- takes the form of a question-and-answer dialogue between Mr Wiseman and Mr Attentive concerning the steady
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moral descent of a conventional commonplace sinner
> The Holy War (1682):
- an allegory describing the three sieges and liberations of the city of Mansoul
- the city was created by Shaddai (God the Father), is temporarily besieged by Diabolus (Satan), and three times
liberated by Shaddai's son Emanuel
SATIRE
- a favourite mode for many writers of the later 17th century: John Dryden, Earl of Rochester, Samuel Butler, etc.
- the early 18th century: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, etc.
SAMUEL BUTLER (1612 - 1680)
- passed his middle age during the fury of the civil wars and under the Commonwealth, found relief for his despise
of Puritan rulers in satirizing their faults
- served as clerk to several Puritan justices of the peace, one of whom was probably the original of Sir Hudibras
> Hudibras (1662, Part II, 1663, Part III, 1678):
- a travesty, or burlesque, taking a serious subject and debasing it by using a low style and grotesque exaggeration
- reduces the iambic tetrameter line (used subtly and seriously by Donne, Milton, or Marwell) to something
approaching a doggerel with boldly comic rhymes
- takes the name of his protagonist from Spenser's Faerie Queene where Sir Hudibras appears briefly as a rash
adventurer and lover, but degrades the knight of chivalric romance into a hypocritical and opportunist character
- derives his digressive narrative from Cervantes's Don Quixote and much of his ironic tone from Rabelais's
Gargantua, but the object of his satire is the intellectual, political, and religious charlatanism of modern England
- attacks Presbyterians and Independents, expresses his contempt for Puritans and their Commonwealth
- takes a sceptical, distrusting, and contemptuous view of the contemporary England, so that it is difficult to think
of anything that he approved unless it was peace, common sense, and the wisdom emerging from the experience(13
- 15) BACKGROUND TO LITERATURE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1700 - 1745
- emergence of a new reading public, including upper-class women and the prosperous middle-class of both sexes
- rise of popular periodical essays, miscellaneous collections of verse and prose, newspapers and later magazines
> demands of popular taste, seen as a coarsening and corruption of the arts, are balanced by attempts to make
classical literature available in translations: e.g. Alexander Pope's translations of Homer
SATIRE:
- the dominant mode, modern times are often satirized by the use of classical forms and myths
> Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714) exposes the frivolity of fashionable London by rendering the idle
upper-class characters as epic heroes
> Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books (1704) mocks the moderns by using epic similes
> John Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) describes his tour in mock georgics
PROSE:
- attempts to achieve the ideal style with the ease and poise of well-bred urbane conversation
> dominated by essayists: Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele
DRAMA:
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- the Restoration comedy of manners is replaced by sentimental comedy, dealing with high moral sentiments,
making the goodness triumph over vice and moving the audience to tears rather than laughter
> e.g. Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers (1722) features a man who would rather accept dishonour than to
fight a duel with a friend
> in contrast John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) resists the sentimental mode in favour of a cynical tone
POETRY:
- the courtly sonnets and lyrics are out of fashion, replaced by descriptive and didactic verse, along with the
popular genres of the ballad, hymn and burlesque
- an elegant simplicity: a new restraint, clarity, regularity and good sense contrasting to John Donne's metaphysical
poetry or John Milton's bold storming of heaven
> John Dryden's search to create love poetry that engages the hearts of readers instead of perplexing them with
philosophical speculation as John Donne's love poetry did
- nature: represented as the universal and permanent element in human experience, while human nature was held to
be uniform, human beings were known to be infinitely varied
> Alexander Pope's praise of Shakespeare's characters as 'Nature herself', each of his characters being 'as much an
individual as those in life itself', so that it is 'impossible to find any two alike'
- poetic diction: personification ('Ace of Hearts steps forth'), periphrasis (a roundabout way of avoiding homely
words, e.g. 'finny tribes' for fish), stock phrases ('shining sword'), forcing English sentences into Latin syntax
- heroic couplet: typically a complete statement in rhymed iambic pentameter closed by a punctuation mark, often
with a caesura enforced by the length of the pentameter line
> Alexander Pope brought the heroic couplet to perfection
- blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter not closed in couplets, typically used for philosophical, descriptive,
meditative poems, for epics and for drama
> James Thomson's Seasons (1726 - 1730) use blank verse for poetry of natural description (13) DANIEL DEFOE
(C. 1660 - C. 1731)
PAMPHLETS AND POEMS
- by birth, education and occupations a stranger to the polite literature of his lifetime
- middle-class by birth, a small merchant by profession and a Presbyterian in religion
- first gained notoriety by political verses and pamphlets
> The True-Born Englishman (1701): his first literary success, a satirical poem pleading for the acceptance of the
foreign king William of Orange and his Dutch friends
> The Shortest Way with the Dissents (1702): an ironic defence of the Anglican oppression (himself counted
among Dissenters), proposes banishing the dissenters from the country and hanging their priests
- some readers failed to understand the satire, there was public unrest and Defoe was punished by imprisonment
- when released from prison through the influence of Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, Defoe found his merchant
establishment collapsed and out of economic necessity turned to writing
- also secretly served his benefactor Harley as a political spy and confidential agent
- founded and contributed to the pro-governmental newspaper The Review (from 1704)
PROSE WRITINGS
- extremely prolific and versatile: wrote some 500 books on politics, geography, religion, marriage, psychology etc.
> A Journal of the Plague Year (1722):
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- mingles history and fiction, facts and impressions, voices and statistics
- gives an account of the London plague of 1665 from the perspective of an insider, a citizen of London
- intends to serve as a warning to the present and as an example of endurance and spiritual reassessment in the past
> A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724 - 1726):
- a travel book in three volumes
- expresses his pride in the steady visible growth of the prosperity and well-being of the newly united kingdom
NOVELISTIC FICTION
- started writing novels only in his late middle age, when he was nearly sixty years old
- mingles elements from diverse literary forms: political pamphlet, moral tract, biography, history, travel book etc.
- creates vivid settings through the cumulative effect of carefully observed, often petty details
- writes easygoing prose, uses the language of actual speech revealing the consciousness of the first person narrator
- makes use of his knowledge of society, both the trading bourgeoisie and the rogues preying on them
- preoccupied with lonely human beings (Robinson Crusoe on his island, Moll Flanders in England and Virginia)
- his characters manifest enormous vitality, humanity and ingenuity
> The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719):
- a first person memoir devoted from two-thirds to the twenty-eight years that the narrator spends on a desert island
- the narrator is 'of good family' and because of his sound education 'not bred to any trade', still he survives
- his decision to go to the sea is an act of rebellion against his parents and his marooning marks the beginning of his
slow and painful redemptive journey back to a state of grace
- the novel is sometimes interpreted as as a fictional enactment of the process of European colonization: when the
island is peopled by Friday, Friday's father and a Spanish sailor (the latter two rescued from the cannibals), Crusoe
comes to think of himself as king with 'an undoubted right of dominion' and an 'absolute lord and law-giver'
- Crusoe however establishes also an unprecedented religious freedom on the island, tolerating pagan, Protestant
and Catholic alike
> The Adventures of Captain Singleton (1720):
- on one level may be read as an adventure story about a fraught journey across central Africa
- on another level describes the moral progress of a seafarer who becomes mutineer and pirate but finally comes to
discover the virtues of religion, honest money and marriage
> The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722):
- follows an upward social and moral mobility of an entrepreneurial and belatedly penitent woman
- the first person narrator recounts her dubious liaisons with seducers, husbands, and lovers, and her progress
through thievery to transportation to Virginia and final financial and emotional happiness
> The History of the Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque (1722):
- remarkable for its intense portrayal of the disorienting and claustrophobic slums of London in which the narrator
struggles for survival as a child pickpocket
- later the narrator becomes uneasy with the sins in which he indulges and presses his narrative into the form of an
instructive fable manifesting the evidence of the ultimate moral
> The Fortunate Mistress, or, Roxana (1724):
- follows a beautiful and ambitious woman's decline from respectability, caused partly by mistreatment on the part
of the men on whom she relied and partly by her own selfish sense of self-preservation
- the first person narrators gives an account of her bad marriage and early poverty forcing her to resort to
prostitution, at which she prospered until eventually her past caught up with her(14) JONATHAN SWIFT (1667 -
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1745)
LIFE AND CAREER
- born in Dublin of newly settled English parents and educated according to Anglican principles in Ireland
- ordained a priest of the Irish Church, consistently but unsuccessfully sought promotion in the English Church
- dedicated to the cause of Irish independence from English interference, was considered the quintessential voice
of the 18th century Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, but felt himself a stranger in the land of his birth and was
equally awkward in identifying himself with England
- the severe disruption of Irish affairs attendant upon James II's attempt to rally Catholics to his cause obliged him
to seek refuge in England (1690), where he lived in the house of the diplomat and essayist Sir William Temple
- originally associated with the Whigs, but abandoned them (1710) for their indifference to the welfare of the
Anglican Church in Ireland, and turned to Tories for whom he served as a political journalist and editor of the party
organ, the Examiner
- devoted his energies and talents to politics and religion, which were not clearly separated at the time
- supported the Anglican Church and was hostile to all who seemed to threaten it, including Deists, Roman
Catholics, Non-Conformists, or merely Whig politicians
SOCIAL INTERCOURSE
- acquainted with many distinguished personalities of the time, including the fellow writers Alexander Pope, John
Arbuthnot, Joseph Addison, and John Gay, or the politicians Lord Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke
- most likely never married, but was deeply devoted to the young daughter of Temple's steward, Esther Johnson
(whom he called Stella), and unsuccessfully pursued by the younger woman Hester Vanhomrigh (called Vanessa)
> The Journal to Stella (1766): collected letters written to Esther Johnson
> "Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713): a poem accounting his relations with Hester Vanhomrigh
SATIRE
- for his satires, especially for the savage Gulliver's Travels, was called by many a misanthrope, a hater of humanity
- as he explained in a letter to Pope, he loved individuals but hated mankind in general, that is he was constantly
provoked by the spectacle of human beings capable of reason and of reasonable conduct, but refusing to act on it
- opposed the current optimistic view that human nature was essentially good by accepting a much older belief that
human nature is deeply and permanently flawed and nothing can be done against it unless we recognize our moral
and intellectual limitations
- professed to write his satires to vex the world rather than to divert it, and employed his writing to serve to the
opening of the broad vista of real freedom of self-knowledge, independence, and responsibility to humanity as a
whole
PROSE
- his prose style is clear and simple, uses concrete diction, uncomplicated syntax, economic and concise language
> A Tale of a Tub (written c. 1696, published 1704, revised 1710):
- contrasts the opinions of three brothers who represent Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Calvinist Dissent
- uses multiple narrators and editors, subversions, gaps, disjunctions, and long digressions on criticism, ancient and
modern literature, and madness
- attacks the Catholic additions to and Protestant detractions from the fundamental doctrines of the Church, which
are metaphorically represented as a coat which the brothers alter according to the whims and fashions they justify
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> The Battle of the Books (1704, revised 1710):
- originated as a complement to Temple's defence of classical literature as opposed to its modern vernacular rival
- features the character of Aesop who meditates between the claims of a pro-modern spider, who spins his webs out
of his own entrails, and a pro-ancient bee, who goes to nature in order to produce noble 'sweetness and light'
- concludes with no solution, but a farcically confused disorder among the characters and an aborted new paragraph
> Meditation on a Broomstick (1710):
- introduces the device of a narrator who assumes a mask in order to strip masks from the objects of his satire
- imitates the solemn style and manner of a pious moral essayist, but undermines the serious tone by the apparent
ridiculousness of the chosen subject
> The Drapier's Letters (1724):
- a series of five public letters purporting to be the work of 'M.B.', a Dublin draper
- aroused Ireland to refuse to accept the new copper coins, which would only further debase the coinage of Ireland
- enjoyed great popularity stemming not only from the general assent of the Irish to his opposition to the relatively
petty injustice, but also from the carefully constructed narrating voice attuned to please a broad Irish audience
> Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World (known as Gulliver's Travels, 1726):
- assumes the persona of Lemuel Gulliver, an English surgeon turned a ship's captain, who is well-educated, proud
of his national origins, both professionally and politically informed, but essentially too easily 'gulled'
- presents himself as oblivious to the parallels between the pettiness of the affairs of Lilliput and those of Europe, is
unshaken by the king of Brobdingnag's condemnation of the English after he has defended their achievements, etc.
- the first two voyages deal with physical disproportion, the third with mental imbalance, while the fourth serves
both to replay themes of physical and mental disorder and to demand a reordering of all preconceptions
- when facing the unreasonable creatures in human form, the Yahoos, and the reasoning creatures in animal form,
the Houyhnhnms, he seeks to be considered an honorary Houyhnhnm-horse rather than an honourable Yahoo
- his desperate attempts to associate himself with real, if extraordinarily endowed, animals lead to his failure, his
final rejection of human society, and his eventual disastrous disjointing of both mind and body, reason and passion
> A Modest Proposal (1729):
- presents a monstrous proposal for the human consumption of surplus infants in a similar tone as in his Meditation
- a political dimension is added by his proposing specifically Irish infants of the poor to feed the rich Englishmen
POETRY
- wrote poetry devoid of and often satirizing romantic love, cosmetic beauty, or conventional poetic language
> "The Lady's Dressing Room" (1730) or "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1731):
- extremely harsh, scatological poems of distaste for the human body and for female sexuality
- intermingles beauty and disease and the human and the animal form similarly as in the Gulliver's Travels(15)
ALEXANDER POPE (1688 - 1744)
LIFE AND CAREER
- the only important writer of his generation who supported himself solely by writing
- as a Roman Catholic not enabled to enter a university, vote, hold public office or enjoy patronage as a writer
- undertook the translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for fame as much as for profit, also edited Shakespeare
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- plagued by ill health, because of tuberculosis of the bone was of very small stature, later suffered from headaches
- his success made him enemies attacking him for his writings, his religion and his physical deformity, Pope fought
back with witty satires (see The Dunciad)
- himself a Tory, associated himself with a group of Tory writers including Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Dr John
Arbuthnot, initiated the forming of a club for satirizing all sorts of false learning and planned to write jointly the
biography of a learned fool named Martin the Scribbler as a running commentary on educated nonsense
> the club fostered the satiric temper expressed in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Gay's The Beggar's Opera
(1728) and Pope's The Dunciad (1728)
MASTER OF METRICS
- mastered the heroic couplet, i.e. rhymed decasyllables in iambic pentameters rhymed in pairs
- attained metrical variety by the free substitution of trochees and spondees for the normal iambs
- achieved rhythmic variety by arranging phrases and clauses of different lengths within singles lines and couplets
- arrived at the precision of meaning despite the most economic use of language and image and use of rigid form
- used unobtrusive patterns of alliteration and assonance
NATURE POET
> Pastorals (1709):
- his earliest publication, an appreciation of natural beauty
- abounds in visual imagery and descriptive passages of ideally ordered nature
> Windsor Forest (1713):
- rejoices in the spiritual permeation of the English landscape by Olympian deities, but also recalls the painful
English past with its Norman oppressors
- concludes with an optimistic vision of the future triumphant exercise of power by the now united Britain
LITERARY CRITIC
- followed the idea that the different genres have their different and appropriate modes
> "a heroi-comical poem", i.e. a comic poem treating trivial material in an epic style, in The Rape of the Lock
> the brooding, passionate voice and declamatory language of the heroine in Eloisa to Abelard
> the grave epistles consistently employing the traditional rhetorical figures in An Essay on Man
> An Essay on Criticism (1711):
- a didactic poem after the example of Horace's Art of Poetry
- an informal discussion of literary theory written in the plain style of a well-bred conversation
- does not aim at novelty, rather gives a pleasing and memorable expression to generally accepted doctrines
- builds upon the keywords of neoclassical criticism: wit, nature, ancients, rules, genius
- the three parts respectively construct a harmonious system on the compromise of conflicting forces, analyse the
causes of faulty criticism, and characterize the good critic, while praising the great critics of the past
LOVE POET
> Eloisa to Abelard (1717):
- based on the 12th century story of a young woman's illicit love and secret marriage to her teacher who is punished
by castration by her parents, on which Abelard enters a monastery and makes Eloisa do the same
- years later Eloisa accidentally comes across Abelard's autobiographical philosophical writing, her passions
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reawakens, and the two exchange letters trying to find the meaning of their personal tragedy
> Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717):
- concerned in a sympathetic tone with the subject of suicide committed by the unnamed lady out of unhappy love
SATIRIST
- usually used fictional or type names, although most often had an individual in mind
- created the fictional I of the satires, a detached observer judging and censoring the age
> The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714):
- a witty urbane satire in the mock-epic genre
- based on an actual episode that provoked a quarrel between two families: Lord Petre had cut off a lock of hair
from the head of Arabella Fermor, which caused much indignation on the part of the lady and her family
- elaborates the trivial episode into a playful and fanciful comic-heroic poem resembling an epic in miniature
- abounds in parodies and echoes of Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost
- the original version consisted of two cantos only, later Pope extended the poem into five cantos, added the
"machinery", i.e. the supernatural agents in epic action, and other devices
> The Dunciad (1728, 1743):
- stigmatizes his literary enemies as agents of all that he feared in the tendencies of his time: the vulgarization of
taste due to the growth of the reading public and cheap popular publications, the commercial spirit in general
- unlike in his other satires names actual persons to raise his victims to emblems of folly and vice
- unlike in other satires does not attempt to uphold the ideals of reasonableness, good sense, and balance, but
contemplates the triumph of the goddess of Dullness, the patron of dunces and the destroyer of order and intellect
- concludes with an apocalyptic vision of the prospective undoing of universe brought about by human ignorance
> Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735):
- bitterly indicts a shabby and corrupt society from which the true artist remains detached and withdrawn
- presents specific persons under fictional names and identifies them as symptoms of a social and aesthetic malaise
PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, AND POLITICS
- perceived the reigns of George I and George II as a period of rapid moral, political, and cultural deterioration
- criticizes the rise of moneyed as opposed to landed wealth, the vulgar class of nouveaux riches and political
corruption encouraged by Sir Robert Walpole
> An Essay on Man (1734):
- a philosophical discussion in a stately tone of such majestic themes as the Creator and His creation, the universe,
human nature, society, happiness etc.
- lays an insistent stress on the concept of a pervasive order which links human beings to nature, creature to
creature, and creature to Creator in a "vast chain of being"
> Epistles to Several Persons (also as Moral Essays, 1735):
- formally a series of four verse letters addressed to carefully selected figures: one of them to Martha Blount, an
intimate friend, the others to prominent aristocratic national figures or arbiters of taste
- the first two deal with various aspects of the passions in men and women, the other two with the use of riches and
with the taste in art or lack of it
> Imitations of Horace (1738):
- manifests Pope's mastery of the plain style of the Roman poet's epistles and satires and establishes him as his heir
(16 - 20) BACKGROUND TO LITERATURE OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1745 - 1790
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GENERAL
- codification of the English language: Samuel Johnson's influential Dictionary (1755)
- faith in common sense: the conservative Edmund Burke, the radical Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson's faith in the
common reader
POETRY
- develops in several different genres parallelly
- the Graveyard School: preoccupied with images of decay, with medieval ruins and tombs
> Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
> Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770)
- medieval revival: cultivates archaic language and antique forms
> Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)
> James McPherson's Ossianic poems (1760s)
> Thomas Chatterton's Rowley poems (1770s)
- personal poetry: uses a down-to-earth, humble and intimate tone
> William Cowper's poetry resembles the accents of friendly conversation
> George Crabbe's The Village (1783) seeks to make poetry from and for the lives of common people
PROSE
- replaces poetry as the dominating genre to set the standards of literature
> intellectual prose: Samuel Johnson's literary criticism, David Hume's philosophy, Edmund Burke's politics
> informal prose: Frances Burney's memories
> letters: Horace Walpole, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Frances Burney
NOVEL
- for the first time develops as a major genre on its own
- the earliest types of prose fiction include courtly romance (Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, 1590), Christian allegory
(John Bunyan's The Pilgrim Progress, 1678), or fictional history (Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, 1688)
- Daniel Defoe: shows his readers a world they know and introduces the characters of unheroic people who try to
cope with practical problems
- Samuel Richardson: perfects the technique of a minute analysis of his characters' mind (Pamela, 1740)
- Henry Fielding: seeks to compose a comic epic-poem in prose (The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, 1749)
- Tobias Smollett: produces picaresque novels full of coarse practical jokes (Roderick Random, 1748)
- Laurence Sterne: experiments with temporal and narrative perspectives (Tristram Shandy, 1760 - 1767)
- sentimental novel: demanded by the popular taste
> Jean Jacques Rousseau's The New Heloise (1761)
- Gothic romance: emerges as a new genre in response to the medieval revival in poetry
> Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764)
> William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794)
> Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796)(16) EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PROSE
PERIODICAL ESSAY
- developed by the literary collaborators Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison in their respective periodicals The
Tatler (1709 - 11, published three times a week) and its successor The Spectator (1711 - 12, daily except Sunday)
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- both essayist were conscious moralists who intended to improve the minds and manners of their readers
- their essays are less formal and didactic than those of Francis Bacon, but less personal than those of Charles Lamb
and William Hazlitt in the next century
- strove for a balance between the new mostly Puritan philistine middle-class and the old often libertine aristocracy
- fostered a new social ideal which stressed moderation, reasonableness, self-control, urbanity, and good taste
SIR RICHARD STEELE (1672 - 1729)
- together with his friend and literary collaborator Joseph Addison developed the genre of the periodical essay
> The Tatler (1709 - 1711):
- an influential newspaper published three times a week, run by Steele with contributions by Addison
- its mixture of news with personal reflection soon proved to be hugely popular with large audiences
- Steele's essays comment on a variety of topics that he considered pleasing or useful, as the theatre, true breeding
against vulgar manners, education, simplicity in dress, the proper use of Sunday, etc.
- assumes the persona of an earnest advocate of ethical propriety and an admonisher of dissolute London
- Steele's contributions to Addison's Spectator deal with drama criticism and express his dislike of the moral
excesses of the Restoration stage
> The Christian Hero (1701):
- a treatise inspired by his brief but successful career as a rakish officer
- argues that religious principles are the basis for the making of a virtuous man, a condition especially difficult to
achieve in the military life
JOSEPH ADDISON (1672 - 1719)
- together with his friend and literary collaborator Richard Steele developed the genre of the periodical essay
- produced the model of the middle style in his prose, familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious
- assumed the role of a self-appointed definer of cultural rules for a broad spectrum of society
- Addison's contributions to Steele's Tatler initiated his clever and agreeably humours study of eccentric characters
> The Spectator (1711 - 1712):
- an influential newspaper published daily except Sunday, dominated by Addison with contributions by Steele
- included not only social criticism but also Addison's popularization of current philosophical and scientific notions
- soon come to dominate clubs and coffee-houses, the new discussion places for non-aristocratic men, which
replaced the now declining court culture
- the paper was purportedly written by Mr Spectator, a man of broad education, well-travelled, and politically alert,
who gathered around himself a small club representative of different aspects of English life (the Tory country
squire, the Whiggish City merchant, the army officer, and the man-about-town)
- represents Addison's ideal persona, proudly patriotic, insularly confident about future, and modestly progressive,
standing for the ideal of an educated common man speaking directly to and on behalf of his less articulate fellows
>> "On the Pleasures of the Imagination" (1712, this is not a title but the subject matter of the essays):
- a series of essays for the Spectator dealing with the aesthetics of visual beauty in nature and art
- classes 'the pleasures of the imagination' at a mid-point between the grosser 'pleasures of sense' and the refined
'pleasure of understanding'
- stresses the self-evident interrelationships of the greatness in nature which inspires the greatness in art
>> "On Milton's Paradise Lost" (1712, not a title):
- praises Milton's genius and aims to refine public taste by short, reasoned, and accessible articles on literature
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NOVEL
- the mid-century novels of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding developed a new form of prose writing which
amplified and finally superseded the autobiographical model established by Daniel Defoe
- emphasis was put on the presentation of real life, without the exaggerations of earlier heroic romances
- novels became a classless phenomenon as they were newly available for a moderate fee from circulating libraries
supported by subscribers, the first such library was established in Edinburgh (1716), then in London (1740)
- the earliest types of prose fiction include courtly romance (Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, 1590), Christian allegory
(John Bunyan's The Pilgrim Progress, 1678), or fictional history (Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, 1688)
- Daniel Defoe: shows his readers a world they know and introduces the characters of unheroic people who try to
cope with practical problems
- Samuel Richardson: perfects the technique of a minute analysis of his characters' mind (Pamela, 1740)
- Henry Fielding: seeks to compose a comic epic-poem in prose (Tom Jones, 1749)
- Tobias Smollett: produces picaresque novels full of coarse practical jokes (Roderick Random, 1748)
- Laurence Sterne: experiments with temporal and narrative perspectives (Tristram Shandy, 1760 - 1767)
- sentimental novel: demanded by the popular taste
> Jean Jacques Rousseau's The New Heloise (1761)
- Gothic romance: emerges as a new genre in response to the medieval revival in poetry
> Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764)
> William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794)
> Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796)
SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689 - 1761)
- a self-educated Londoner, apprenticed to a printer, advanced to two successive marriages to the daughters of
former employers and finally to the mastership of a stationer's company
- his writing manifests his fascination with class, but in no sense any attempt of social or moral iconoclasm
> The Apprentice's Vade Mecum or Young Man's Pocket Companion (1733):
- his first own publication, little more than a handbook of ethics for the aspirant lower middle class, but brought
him a commission for a further manual
- his next manual was a series of 'familiar letters' to serve as models to prospective correspondents, providing the
ideal letters of consolation, excuses for not lending money, formal recommendations for chambermaids, etc., but
including also some seven letters sketching the story of Pamela
> Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740):
- an epistolary novel, not the first novel narrated in this form, but the most influential
- unlike Defoe's public retrospective autobiographies (Robinson Crusoe, Colonel Jacque, or Moll Flanders) takes
the intimate form of private letters written by Pamela to her worthy parents and of entries into her journal
- a virtuous servant-girl is embarrassed by the sexual attentions of her master and finally succeeds in marrying him
> Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady (1748):
- experiments with multiple voices and multiple points of view, but keeps a strictly chronological discipline
- told by four major letter-writers, Clarissa Harlowe and her friend Anna, Lovelace and his friend Belford, and a
host of minor correspondents or note-writers
- begins in January with Lovelace's duel, continues in spring with Clarissa's escape from her home from an
unwanted marriage, in summer Clarissa is violated by her supposed deliverer Lovelace, and in December she dies
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while Lovelace is mortally wounded in another duel
- the plot is based on Clarissa's rebellion against marrying a physically repulsive but rich man chosen by her
parents, the novel both advises caution to parents against 'the undue exercise of their natural authority over their
children' and more significantly warns women against preferring a man of pleasure to a man of probity
- Clarissa is the first great bourgeois heroine, though a victim of parental strictures, sibling rivalry with her elder
sister, and the physical and spiritual abuse of her lover, she endures her martyrdom with patience and intelligence
- Lovelace is a direct descendant of the aristocratic rakes of Restoration drama, he rejoices in and derives pleasure
from plots, hunts, and stratagems designed to win him the attention of the woman he desires
- Clarissa dies a Christian death, having rediscovered the meaning of her suffering, and also the dying Lovelace
expiates
> The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754):
- an epistolary novel written on the urge of Richardson's friends who wished him to write about the 'Good Man'
- the novel's upright protagonist with his deadening propriety becomes also the main shortcoming of the story
- Sir Charles rescues a young lady from an attempted abduction and she in turn delivers him from an amatory
obligation to a Catholic Italian lady
HENRY FIELDING (1707 - 1754)
- started as a playwright, but his last play, a political satire, provoked Walpole's government into passing a
Licensing Act which which introduced official censorship and restricted London performances to two theatres only
- his experience as a playwright is projected in his novels in their grasp of idiomatic speech and dialogue, their
understanding of the patterning of incident, and their feeling for well-establishment denouement
- unlike Richardson does not focus his moral preoccupation on a single class or on an exemplary individual, but
rather attempts to define an overall human norm
> An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (1741):
- a satire on Richardson's Pamela presenting the heroine as a calculating hypocrite and an upward-mobility seeker
- exploits not only the once virtuous Pamela, who originally refers to her employer modestly as 'Mr B.' and now
calls him 'Booby', but also the once sympathetic character of Parson Williams
> The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr Abraham Adams (1742):
- rejects the inward-looking epistolary form in favour of a more variable third-person narrative
- begins as a parody on Pamela in following Pamela's brother in the service of another branch of the Booby family
- experiments with a new fictional form which he calls 'a comic epic poem in prose', taking the wide range of
character, incident, diction, and reference from the epic, but adopting a moral stance by laughing away faults rather
than preaching against them
- features two innocent protagonists, Joseph Andrews and his protector Parson Adams, who engage in an epic
voyage of discovery during which they encounter corruption but also unexpected charity of the humble and meek
- both exposes hypocrisy and discovers selflessness, simple honesty, and a virtue that does not seek for a reward
> The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743):
- develops the basic idea that a 'Great Man' brings 'all manner of mischief on mankind', whereas a 'good' man
removes mischief, the former exploits society, while the latter enhances it
- exerted a profound influence of Fielding's most dedicated 19th century admirer, William Makepeace Thackeray
> The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749):
- examines the aristocratic principle of the nobility of 'good nature', but suggests that the complementary qualities
of 'prudence and religion' must be added
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- manifests this idea in the character of Tom, who is of gentle birth and therefore of instinctively gentle manners
- offers the author's most meticulous response to the challenge of classical epic and his most considered comic
redefinition of the role of the epic hero
- divides the novel into eighteen books, the first six dealing with Tom's supposed origins, his education, and the
nature of his fall from grace, the following six tracing his journey to London paralleled to that of his adored but
often estranged Sophia, and the last six books bringing all the character together
- contains a whole series of comments on other literary forms, as the satire, the pastoral, the comedy, and the mockheroic, the omniscient narrator often digresses to comment on his methods, on literary criticism, philosophy, etc.
- the protagonist makes mistakes, but is finally brought to triumph which is viewed as a moral victory achieved
through experience rather than imposed by the norms, laws, or codes of the often hypocritical society
> Amelia (1752):
- his most sombre work, a novel of married life, which follows the fraught and uncertain career of a captain and the
frequent distress and isolation of his prudent, constant, and loving wife
- concludes with the captain's release from the Newgate prison and the discovery that Amelia is an heiress, on
which the couple retires from the temptations of London life to the securities and simple pleasures of the country
LAURENCE STERNE (1713 - 1768)
> A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768):
- intended by the author 'to teach us to love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do', cultivates
sentiment under the guidance of a witty country parson, but at the same time parodies the conventional travel-book
- the protagonist almost mischievously declines to see the sights of Calais and Paris, ends his journey in Lyons
without even nearing the French border with Italy, and concludes his narrative with an abruptly broken sentence
> The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759 - 1767):
- the most daring bid to escape from the established literary models and an unprecedented experiment with form
- the organization of the novel lies in the consciousness of a narrator who fails in the first two of the total of nine
volumes even to get himself born
- the narrator presents rather a series of comic ironies observed in a 'civil, nonsensical, and good-humoured' manner
- the underlying questioning of meaning is reinforced by digressions, hiatuses, absences, lacunae, dashes, asterisks,
and the black, blank, and marbled pages
- all information remains provisional, all interpretation is relative, and any sense of ending is consistently denied
TOBIAS SMOLLETT (1721 - 1771)
- adapted the picaresque tradition to suit a modern taste for realism and to describe a recognizably modern world
- distances himself from any deviations from probability and possibility and from all too sudden transitions in plot
- besides writing his own original novels he also translated Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605, 1615)
> The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748):
- features a well-born and well-educated Scottish protagonist who is exposed to the 'selfishness, envy, malice, and
base indifference of mankind' in England and the wider world
- does not present the protagonist as a rebellious romantic outsider, despite his being a wronged disinherited heir
- draws on the experience of his native Scotland and on his naval experience as a ship's surgeon, pioneers the
inclusion into the novel of scenes of modern warfare as alternatives to the fantasy battles of earlier romances
> The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751):
- features again a wandering protagonist, but this time a violent, imprudent, and arrogant man
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- concludes with the protagonist's repentance, coinciding with rescue from prison and an inheritance, which allows
for a happy marriage and retirement to the country
> The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753):
- a proto-Gothic novel
> The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771):
- an epistolary novel following the journey of an elderly and often cynical gentleman from his estates in Wales to
London and then to Scotland, who acquires a servant, Humphry, on the journey who turns out to be his natural son
- the form allows for a multiplicity of viewpoints and epistolary styles
- notable for its topographical exactness and a sharp observation of both social and geographical irregularities
OLIVER GOLDSMITH (c. 1730 - 1774)
- an Irish novelist, poet, and playwright
- preoccupied with the themes of a rejection of male ambition and a desire for philosophic harmony of the mind
- frequently employs the character of an unworldly priest as a spiritual guide and moral arbiter (poem The Deserted
Village, novels The Citizen of the World and The Vicar of Wakefield)
> The Citizen of the World (1762):
- uses an alien Chinese narrator as an innocent commentator on the whims and hypocrisies of the European society
> The Vicar of Wakefield (1766):
- a philosophical tale of an innocent priest who bears all the misfortunes that befall him with Job-like patience
- the protagonist never really asserts himself, none the less he attempts to act as a moral persuader in his firm belief
in the benign workings of divine providence(17) EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DRAMA
SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
- replaces the Restoration comedy of manners
- deals with high moral sentiments, makes the goodness triumph over vice, and moves the audience to tears rather
than laughter
SIR RICHARD STEELE (1672 - 1729)
> The Conscious Lovers (1722):
- features a man who would rather accept dishonour than to fight a duel with a friend
- contributed to the vogue for sentimental comedy throughout the later 18th century
JOSEPH ADDISON (1672 - 1719)
> Cato (1713):
- a rather unexceptional and unemotional tragedy dealing with a Roman republican who determines to commit
suicide rather than submit to the tyranny of the victorious Caesar
- the presented sentiment assured the popularity of the play with those Whigs who sought historic justification for
the Glorious Revolution
SATIRICAL COMEDY
- some playwrights resisted the taste for sentimental comedy and turned to writing cynical comedies instead
JOHN GAY (1685 - 1732)
- together with Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Arbuthnot founded the Scriblerus Club, a group of
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mostly Tory writers famous for their literary satires and practical jokes meant to debunk pretensions and false tastes
> The Beggar's Opera (1728):
- a so-called 'Newgate Pastoral', a play which pokes fun at people and events appearing in the news of the time and
gives a worldly and cynical message, seasoned with wit, on the state of society
- most obviously targets at the fashionable artificial and costly performances of the Italian opera, turns the music
over to beggars, thieves, and whores, and gives them popular British tunes to sing instead of showy foreign arias
- exposes the corrupt legal system which at the time rewarded criminals for informing on less powerful felons
- superimposes the underworld criminals on heads of state, especially the prime minister Robert Walpole
- shows the faithful picture of a society driven by greed, where everything, including justice and love, is for sale
- inspired Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, which adapts the story to the conditions of Germany in the 1920s
> Polly (1729): a sequel of The Beggar's Opera, banned from the stage by Walpole and appeared only in print
HENRY FIELDING (1707 - 1754)
- started as a playwright, but his last play, a political satire, provoked Walpole's government into passing a
Licensing Act which which introduced official censorship and restricted London performances to two theatres only
- his experience as a playwright is projected also in his novels in their grasp of idiomatic speech and dialogue, their
understanding of the patterning of incident, and their feeling for well-establishment denouement
> Love in Several Masques (1728)
> The Author's Farce (1730): a sharp comedy satirically depicting the world of hacks and booksellers
> Rape upon Rape; or, the Justice Caught in his own Trap (1730): a comedy
> Tom Thumb: A Tragedy (1730, revised as The Tragedy of Tragedies, 1731): a burlesque playing with the effects
of parody, literary allusion, irregular blank verse, and the mannerism of academic editing
> The Mock Doctor (1732) and The Miser (1733): adaptations from Moliere
> Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register for 1736 (1737): political satires, banned from the stage
COMEDY OF MANNERS
- newly refines the pleasures in the devices, the amatory intrigues, and the exposures of the Restoration comedy
OLIVER GOLDSMITH (c. 1730 - 1774)
- an Irish novelist, poet, and playwright
- author of hearty and mirthful comedies unspoilt by the then fashionable sentimentality of the moment
> "Essay on the Theatre" (1773):
- draws a clear distinction between a 'laughing' and a 'sentimental' comedy, the former being a satirical laughing
away of faults, the latter an emotional stimulus to sympathetic tears
- prefers to use the unsentimental 'laughing' comedy in his own plays
> The Good-Natured Man (1768):
- exposes the social shortcomings of a too generous nature possessed by its protagonist
- cures the generously credulous man by the devices of his sensible uncle
> She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes of a Night (1773):
- brings the 'bashful and reserved' protagonist out of himself by the 'stooping' of a resourceful young woman
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751 - 1816)
- an Irish playwright, author of comedies full of action, confusion, and verbal wit
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> The Rivals (1775):
- draws on the conventions of the Restoration comedy in featuring a booby squire and a whimsical father who
requires absolute obedience
- confronts the authority of an older generation with the success of the stratagems of its young lovers
> St Patrick's Day (1775): a farce
> The Duenna (1775): a comic opera
> The Trip to Scarborough (1777):
- refashions John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696), purging its indecorous expression and ambiguous motivation
> A School for Scandal (1777):
- a moral fable about two brothers, a sentimental and hypocritical villain, and a virtuous and generous libertine
- exposes in a witty way the surfaces, affectations, prejudices, and the petty hypocrisies which form the 'scandal'
> The Critic: or, A Tragedy Rehearsed (1779):
- a clever burlesque on the problem of producing a play and a satirical defence of the author's own art against hacks
- includes a satire on the sentimental comedy writer Richard Cumberland (1732 - 1811), here Sir Fretwell Plagiary
(18) EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY
POETRY
- develops in several different genres parallelly
- the Graveyard School: preoccupied with images of decay, with medieval ruins and tombs
> Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
> Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770)
- medieval revival: cultivates archaic language and antique forms
> Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765)
> James McPherson's Ossianic poems (1760s)
> Thomas Chatterton's Rowley poems (1770s)
- personal poetry: uses a down-to-earth, humble, and intimate tone
> James Thomson's The Seasons (1726) develops the genre of a long blank verse meditative poem
> William Cowper's The Task (1785) resembles the accents of friendly conversation
> George Crabbe's The Village (1783) seeks to make poetry from and for the lives of common people
SATIRICAL POETRY
JOHN GAY (1685 - 1732)
- together with Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and John Arbuthnot founded the Scriblerus Club, a group of
mostly Tory writers famous for their literary satires and practical jokes meant to debunk pretensions and false taste
> The Shepherd's Week (1714):
- a burlesque pastoral intermixing high Virgilian style and rustic humour
- exposes the discrepancy between high poetic expectations and the coarse reality of the way people live
> Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716):
- a mock georgic, an eclogue in an urban setting which shifts the rural conventions to the town
- the title refers to the pretended goddess of the highways, Trivia, who serves as a muse leading the narrator's walk
> Fables (1727):
- a financially successful collection of verse stories
> Three Hours after Marriage (1717):
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- a collaborative satire written by Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot
GRAVEYARD SCHOOL
THOMAS GRAY (1716 - 1771)
- the most enduringly famous and fluent representative of the Graveyard Poets
- educated at Eton, where he won influential friends, including e.g. Horace Walpole, the Prime Minister's son
- made a grand tour on the continent as Walpole's guest, visiting France and Italy, but later quarrelled with Walpole
- was by inclination withdrawn, vulnerable, and melancholic, which is manifested in the persona of his poetry
- adopted the persona of a solitary brooding speaker who contemplates and meditates rather than acts or celebrates
- employed at once a prophetic and intimate style, yet used a highly artificial diction and distorted word order
- wrote slowly and carefully and published very little
> "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1742):
- the overall effect of the poem is that of recalling the lost innocence of boyhood unaware of the troubles of adults
> "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat" (1748):
- a mock-heroic poem manifesting a gentle scholarly wit and an easy moving sophistication
> "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751):
- makes mood and landscape of the poem mutually sustain each other
- meditates on the obscure destinies of the unknown and undistinguished villagers buried in the churchyard
- culminates in the celebrated comment on unfulfilled potential greatness of the buried villagers
> "The Progress of Poesy" (1754):
- a Pindaric ode which experiments with the Greek poet's complex metric frameworks and elaborate prosody
- traces a patriotic genealogy of English verse by suggesting a tradition reaching back to ancient Rome and Greece
> "The Bard" (1757):
- a Pindaric ode considering the discontinuity of poetry where the "The Progress of Poesy" celebrated its continuity
- interfuses a Celtic tradition and an English inheritance within a classical framework
- draws on the tradition that King Edward I (1239 - 1307), having ordered the extinction of the Bards of Wales, was
confronted with a venerable survivor of the order who prophesied him the end of the Plantagenets and the renewal
of poetry under the Tudor dynasty, whose origins lay in Wales
OLIVER GOLDSMITH (c. 1730 - 1774)
- an Irish novelist, poet, and playwright
- preoccupied with the themes of a rejection of male ambition and a desire for philosophic harmony of the mind
- frequently employs the character of an unworldly priest as a spiritual guide and moral arbiter (poem The Deserted
Village, novels The Citizen of the World and The Vicar of Wakefield)
> The Traveller: or, A Prospect of Society (1764):
- a semi-autobiographical poem dedicated to his clergyman brother and praising his brother's choice of profession
- appreciates his brother's rejection of the searching of the external world for a bliss 'which only centres in the mind'
- retraces his journey on the continent, including France, Italy, and Switzerland, but presents a morally educational
rather than a sentimental journey
- written in conservative couplets with an air of graceful simplicity
> The Deserted Village (1770):
- idealizes English rural life against the harsh reality of the difficulties attendant on the agricultural revolution
- indirectly attacks the enclosure system and protests against the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands
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- opposes the 'luxury' in the increase of wealth, the growth of cities, and the costly country estates of noblemen and
wealthy merchants, and the 'rural virtue' in the old agrarian economy that supported a class of independent peasants
- Enclosure Acts: common arable land was being enclosed, i.e. taken out of the hands of small proprietors for the
sake of more profitable farming or to create vast private parks and gardens
MEDIEVAL REVIVAL
THOMAS PERCY (1729 - 1811)
- a scholarly bishop, but did not feel pressurised to concentrate his energies on theology only
- educated to appreciate classical principles, but reflected the shift towards a new and receptive poetic sensibility
- interested in literary outside narrowly defined canons, pioneered the explorations of alternative literary traditions
> Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated from the Islandic Language (1763):
- translations from the Icelandic, improved by the translator
- aimed for the market for 'ancient poetry' newly opened by James Macpherson's Ossian
> Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765):
- a three-volume collection of ballad poetry based on a various 17th century manuscript collection now know as
'The Percy Folio', which he saved from destruction when he discovered it 'being used by the maids to light the fire'
- edited and improved the original ballads, but with an alertness to the virtues of a plain mode of expression
- foreshadowed the ballad revival in English poetry characteristic of the Romantic movement (William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads)
> The Hermit of Warkworth (1771):
- his original ballad on the Warkworth castle which combines the vogue for the Churchyard Poets and the ballad
vogue he himself set in motion
- a subject to three satires by Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) on the simplicity of the ballad verse form, suggesting
that there is a narrow line between the beautiful simplicity and simple mindedness
JAMES MACPHERSON (1736 - 1796)
- his vicarious contribution to literature is based on his having pretended to have discovered and translated the
manuscripts of the 3rd century Scottish Gaelic bard 'Ossian, the son of Fingal'
- some Gaelic ballad poetry is truly attributed to one 'Oisean', son of the warrior Fionn, but he cleverly adapted, recreated, and expanded mere fragments of surviving verse
- confounded stories belonging to different cycles to give a Homeric coherence and classical solemnity to the
disparate ballad accounts of ancient Scottish feuds
- the authenticity of Ossian was immediately challenged by Samuel Johnson who realized that Macpherson had
found fragments of ancient poems and stories and woven them into a romance of his own composition
- Ossian was admired by the Romantics, including Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 - 1803), Friedrich Schiller (1759
- 1805), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 - 1832) who incorporated his translation of a part of the work into his
novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
> Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books (1762) and Temora: An Ancient Epic Poem in Eight Books (1763):
- manifests his appreciation of natural beauty, includes the emotive associations of wild landscape, and treats the
ancient legend of primitive heroism with a melancholy tenderness
THOMAS CHATTERTON (1752 - 1770)
- wayward from his earliest youth, uninterested in the games of other children, liable to fits of abstraction when
sitting for hours as if in trance or crying for no reason, considered educationally backward
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- fascinated with the Middle Ages, lived in an ideal medieval world of his own creation supported by his voracious
reading of Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Percy's Reliques, and James Macpherson's Ossian
- his uncle held an office in a church, so he was familiar with the altar tombs commemorating the dead knights and
ecclesiastics, and with ancient legal documents laying there forgotten
- from the age of eleven contributed religious poems to a local journal, later political satires to London periodicals,
his contributions were accepted but paid for little or not at all
- did not have to suffer the dire poverty but was too proud to accept help, finally the financial distress and lack of
literary success led him to suicide when he was not yet eighteen
- came to be admired by the Romantics as a suffering unacknowledged genius, Keats dedicated him his Endymion
(1818), Wordsworth addressed him as the 'marvellous Boy' in his 'Resolution and Independence' (1807), etc.
- forged the so-called 'Rowley Poems', mock medieval poems by the imaginary 15th century priest Thomas Rowley
> "Elinoure and Juga":
- an eclogue and the only of the Rowley poems published during his lifetime
- wrote the poem at the age of eleven and claimed it to be a transcription of Rowley's work
- contains obvious borrowings, deliberate use of archaic words picked out of dictionaries, and anachronistic use of
Elizabethan verse forms
> "An Excelente Balade of Charitie":
- another of the Rowley poems
> Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777):
- a posthumous collection edited by a Chaucerian scholar who then believed them to be genuine medieval works
- the authenticity of the poems was challenged shortly thereafter and they were proved to be fakes
PERSONAL POETRY
JAMES THOMSON (1700 - 1748)
> To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton (1727):
- an elegy on the death of Newton confirming Thomson's interest in Newtonian science, his own delight in physics
and optics, and his drift from a Presbyterian background towards Deism
> The Seasons (first part published in 1726, last edition 1746):
- a blank verse narrative poem, grew in size and scope over twenty years due to Thomson's changing attitudes
- the systematic revisions and enlargements of the poem reflect his search for an all-inclusive natural order
- shows his debt to the model of Virgil's Georgics in intertwining the pastoral, the patriotic, and the philosophical
- also suggest his indebtedness to the 17th and 18th century science, e.g. some of his periphrasis (the 'wanderers of
heaven' and 'household feathery people' for wild and domesticated birds) not only reflect the Latinate convention
but also attempt to place each creature in the natural system
- his digressions into the extremes of climate of Africa and Asia in Summer or to the Russian snows in Winter serve
as contrasts pointing up the blessings of the temperate climate of north-western Europe
- his response to the landscape is informed by his vision of the harmonious interaction of man and nature, and the
balanced interrelationship between the interests of the country and the town, agrarian productivity and urban trade
- recognizes that national prosperity is dependent on agricultural production
WILLIAM COWPER (1731 - 1800)
- a subject to fits clinical depression and to the Calvinist conviction of his sinful nature and inevitable damnation
- focused his life on diverting his mind from numb despair by gardening, keeping pets, walking, writing letters, etc.
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- did not equate his retirement with a dissociation from secular concerns, frequently wrote on sin and the corruption
of the world, expressed his anger at abuses and offences, and denunciated colonisation and slavery
> "The Negro's Complaint":
- the poem turns arguments about civilization on their heads and demands proof of slave-traders that their human
feelings are in any way superior to those of the Africans they exploit
> The Task (1785):
- began as a mock-heroic poem on the suggestion of Lady Austen that he write a poem about the sofa in his parlour
- eventually grew into a long meditative poem of more than five thousand lines
- contemplates his small world of country, village, garden, and parlour, glances beyond these only to condemn
cities and worldliness, war and slavery, luxury and corruption
- uses the active contemplation of nature as a basis from which he develops other meditations
- employs an introspective muted tone, a delicate sensibility, and a precise and clear language
- the choice of blank verse enabled him to achieve an easy, comfortable, refined but relaxed rhythms of speech
> Olney Hymns (1779):
- short religious lyrics written together with the Evangelical clergyman John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace"
GEORGE CRABBE (1754 - 1832)
- his life spanned through the Romantic period, but his own poetry is rooted in the eighteenth-century literature
- born to poverty in a small decayed seaport, sought for a patron or a literary employment in London, and finally
received help by Edmund Burke and the position of an ordained priest of the Anglican Church
- his literary mentors were Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson
- his poetry continued to use the conservative rhymed couplet, which allowed for both antithesis and qualification
and for a variable use of the caesura to approximate to the rhythms of speech
- wrote in the vein of realism with great accuracy of details, developed his powers for narrative and characterization
> The Village (1783):
- an anti-pastoral poem starkly contrasting with Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770) and with the long
tradition of natural description from James Thomson to William Cowper
- its unrelieved realism and gloom make an angry and scornful reply to the pastoral convention and the sentimental
cult of rural simplicity, innocence, and happiness
- knew from his own experience the degrading effects of hopeless poverty, the rural vice, and the gulf separating
the landed gentry from their labouring tenants
- seeks to present 'the real picture of the poor', represents the village life as 'a life of pain' haunted by human and
architectural wreckage, the shadows of rejection, the poor house, and pauper burial
> The Parish Register (1807):
- introduces as a narrator a country parson who explores 'the simple annals' of his parish poor, leafing through and
commenting on the entries in his register of births, marriages, and deaths
- like his Romantic poet contemporaries also examines the interconnections between character and environment
>> "Sir Eustace Grey":
- analyses the obsessed psyche of a hallucinating dreamer troubled both by past guilt and present religious mania
- manifests his skill in creating a poetry of mood with dislocated images and details suggesting the disordered mind
> The Borough (1810):
- contains an impressive story of the outsider Peter Grimes, an unhappy rebel against his rigid father and an abuser
of the apprentices placed in his charge, who is gradually driven out of his community to live in a boat
> The Tales (1812):
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- unlike the story of Peter Grimes focuses mostly on the insiders fostering conventional moral and religious values
- presents unremarkable parish priests and their equally unremarkable curates and magistrates, as e.g. Justice Bolt
- despite occasional religious and social questioning Crabbe's moral sensibility as manifested in his poetry is
derived from a loyally Anglican understanding of the nature of society, its ranks, relationships, and responsibilities
> Tales of the Hall (1819)(19) SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709 - 1784)
LIFE AND CAREER
- his father's lack of financial resources obliged him to leave Oxford without a degree (1731), but later in his career
was awarded doctorates by Trinity College in Dublin (1765) and by the University of Oxford (1775)
- unsuccessfully tried to support himself as a schoolmaster, later as a journalist, which made him recognize the
perils of the life of a young writer in London and formed the sentiments of his Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744)
- at the suggestion of the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds founded the informal group of writers and artists known as
the Club, later the Literary Club, which included Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
Thomas Percy, James Boswell, Hester Thrale (later Piozzi), Fanny Burney, the actor David Garrick, and others
STYLE AND SUBJECTS
- uses a balanced and measured style in poetry and long, shapely, and supple sentences in prose
- despite the complex syntax his style is not obscure, each sentence precisely follows the structure of the thought
- masters the syntactical skill of both granting and gradually withdrawing assent to an argument or proposition
- typically conditions or undoes an initial proposition through dependent clauses, parallelisms, and antitheses
- shows his mastery of lexicographical skills, most evident in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
- plays with definitions, makes a learned use of Latinate vocabulary, and takes delight in using polysyllabic words
- deals with the great facts of human experience, with hope and loss, happiness and duty, and the fear of death
- emphasizes moral strength and health, faith in God, the application of reason to experience, and the test of virtue
by what we do rather than what we say or feel
- bases his understanding of the human condition not only on his wide reading but also on his own often painfully
gained experience
DRAMA
> Irene (1737, 1749):
- an early blank verse tragedy written to earn his living
- performed belatedly through the good offices of his friend David Garrick, but was not successful
POETRY
> London: A Poem (1738):
- a verse satire modelled on the Third Satire of the Roman poet Juvenal
- reflects on London as a city destructive of artistic talent and of the physical and mental well-being of the artist
> The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749):
- a verse imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal
- closely follows the order and the ideas of the Latin poem, but employs his own personal approach to the satire to
expresses his own sense of the tragic and comic in human life
- seeks to reproduce in English verse the qualities he thinks especially Juvenalian, that is the stateliness, pointed
sentences, and declamatory grandeur
- uses extremely compact style, forces every line to convey the greatest possible amount of meaning
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- follows his theory that the poet should deal with the general rather than the particular, but makes sure that the
general does not fade into the abstract
- illustrates the folly of human aspiration on examples of blind confidence challenged by time or destiny and rejects
the precarious secular hope in favour of a stoic Christian submission to the will of God
PROSE
> Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744):
- denounces the evils inherent in a writer's dependence on the whims of his patrons for support
- expresses both sympathetic appreciation of the struggles of a young outsider and irritation at his bad inclinations
> The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759):
- a philosophical fable in the form of an Oriental tale, tracing the wanderings of an African prince and his sister
- locates the source of human discontentment in the 'hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life' and
which makes us cling to our illusions despite the contrary evidence of experience
- gives a minimal incidental plot, rather concentrates on a series of encounters, experiences, and discussions which
serve as evaluations of the different ways of the pursuit of happiness tried out by the two travellers
- does not pretend to have solved the problem, ends with a conclusion 'in which nothing is concluded', and the last
short sentences lead back to the point at which the story began
JOURNALISM
> The Rambler (1750 - 1752):
- his own journal in which he published his periodical essays
- introduces a wryly humorous, discursive, informed, and moral narrator a opposed to the middle-brow entertainer
of Joseph Addison's The Spectator
- examines aspects of literature, biography, religion, philosophy, and ethics
> The Idler (1758 - 1760):
- the title for his series of periodical essays contributed to the Universal Chronicle
LINGUISTICS
> A Dictionary of the English Language (1755):
- before Johnson there was no standard dictionary and in the absence of any authority English seemed likely to
change utterly from one generation to another
- Johnson codified a respectable number of forty thousand words, provided them with excellent definitions and
with more than a hundred thousand illustrative quotations gathered from the best English writers to exemplify the
usage of the words as well as their meanings
CRITICISM
> Shakespeare (1765):
- his edition of Shakespeare's plays with a substantial critical Preface, carefully revised texts, and extensive
explanatory notes on each of the plays
- his revisions of the texts did not always found assent of subsequent editors, but his Preface and the notes remain
landmarks in the development of textual and critical study
- the Preface seeks to consolidate Shakespeare's reputation as a national classic by rejecting the criticisms of those
who had seen him as defective in both learning and dramatic tact, and to project an image of him as the poet who
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holds up a faithful mirror to our manners and lives
- addresses the now standard topics of Shakespeare as the poet of nature rather than learning, the creator of
characters who spring to life, and a writer whose works express the full range of human passions
- may be often prescriptive, but unfailingly detects both Shakespeare's particular problems and particular felicities
> Lives of the Poets (1779 - 1781):
- a series of biographical and critical prefaces commissioned for a new edition of those English poets of the late 17th
and 18th centuries who were deemed by the booksellers to have achieved classic status
- the selection follows current fashions, starts with Abraham Cowley and John Milton, and ends with Thomas Gray
- omits such now standard poets as Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, or Andrew
Marvell, but includes e.g. John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, James Thomson, Alexander Pope
- the prefaces intermix literary criticism, biographical information, and a delineation of cultural context
- his biography insists on truth, even about the subject's defects, and includes concrete, often minute details, using
much information acquired at first hand
- does not deny the poets their right to flights of imagination, but asserts that poetry must make sense, please
readers, and help them not only understand the world but also cope with it
- his criticism engages some of the deepest questions about literature, why it endures, and how it helps us endure
JAMES BOSWELL (1740 - 1795)
> The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791):
- presents Johnson as the doyen of his age, generous, honest, compassionate, censorious, and devout
- at the same time attempts to show him as a more troubled private man prone to self-examination and vexed by
both religious gloom and divine hope(20) LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL
SENSE AND SENTIMENT
- both Charlotte Smith and Frances Burney were directly touched by the French Revolution, but neither espoused
radical causes in her fiction, Burney in particular increasingly emphasized the passivity of her female protagonists
- the novels of both writers present the world as an unstable, oppressive, and uncomfortable environment which
tests the moral maturity of men and women and finds it not wanting
- their women protagonists are not seen as threatened victims, rather as dependants, sojourners in the shadow of
energetic men, and decision-makers only in so far as they are presented with moral choices
CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749 - 1806)
- as a result of her miserable marriage turned to writing in order to make money to support her children
- her contemporary reputation was based largely on her poetry, which adopts the persona of a melancholy narrator
modelled deliberately on Goethe's Werther
- her novels are far less personal and emotional, preoccupied with money, inheritance, and the country house life
> Elegiac Sonnets, and other Essays (1784):
- the sensitive speaker of the poems is responsive to seasonal change, but also alert to a disjunction between
nature's outward harmony and a private restlessness
- the power of her poetry lies in a combination of detailed observation and recurrent evocation of misery
> Emmeline (1788):
- the novel plays with the Gothic by initially confining the female protagonist in a rambling country fortress and
allowing her to elude unwanted suitors by escaping down labyrinthine corridors
> The Old Manor House (1793):
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- also deals with seclusion in a mansion, adding what prove to be unfounded suspicions of ghosts (the bumps in the
night are made by smugglers who are effectively undermining the house's foundations)
- despite the its title the novel focuses on the dilemmas, the politics, and the sentiments of the present
- contrasts the views of the manor's owner, an old-fashioned Tory, who dwells on her family's ancient chivalric
pretensions, and her young cousin, a daring pacifist, who experiences the miseries of army life when fighting with
the British army in North America
- these conflicts serve but as a background, the novel's proper focus is romantic love and a proper line of succession
> Desmond (1792):
- a limited attempt to defend the liberal principles of the first stages of the French Revolution
> The Emigrants (1793):
- a poem capturing her disillusion with the bloody progress of the Revolution and her active sympathy with and
support for French refugees in England
FRANCES (FANNY) BURNEY (1752 - 1840)
- spent five years as a lady-in-waiting at the court, accepted the place to please her father, but felt tormented by the
paralysing etiquette and lack of independence
- in her early forties married a French emigrant, despite the disapproval of her father, the marriage was happy, but
the couple's visit to France was prolonged to ten years as the Napoleonic wars prevented their return to England
- her novels, letters, and diaries sparkle with humour, but can be cruel in exposing bad manners or a selfish heart
- her writings manifest a gift for catching character, a wonderful ear for dialogue, wry humour, and a swift pace
- her special subject is social embarrassment, often her own
- typically follows young innocent women entering society at an awkward age or in unfavourable circumstances,
their learning through mistakes, embarrassments, and reverses, and their final success in the love of an upright
suitor and the ultimate prospect of a happy marriage
> Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778):
- written in secret and published anonymously, but delighted readers of the novel soon found the author out
- features a girl with 'a virtuous mind, a cultivated understanding, and a feeling heart' who is initially ignorant of the
ways of the world, but comes to learn the value of decorum in fashionable society and also acquires a modest
wisdom which transcends the limits of that society, finally she is rewarded be becoming the wife of a worthy lord
> Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782):
- her second novel confirmed her reputation as a writer, it further develops the themes of Evelina, but with a far
blunter satirical edge than in the first novel and a more emphatic assertion of moral conventions
> Camilla; or, a Picture of Youth (1796):
- the comedy is yet more subdued in favour of a defence of social values in the face of revolutionary questioning
- emphasizes the moral message about the importance of good conduct, especially in the "Sermon" addressed to
Camilla by her father and putting forward an ideal of female action
- the "Sermon" is a counterblast to Mary Wollstonecraft's demands for female education, equality, and
independence, puts a Christian stress on patience, self-conquest, and good sense as the means of controlling passion
- these ideas were evidently in accord with Burney's own views, for she later allowed this sermon to be separately
reprinted as a part of a conduct book for young ladies
> The Wanderer: or, Female Difficulties (1814):
- contrasts the individual struggles of two young women, one a disorientated French refugee in England from
revolutionary persecution, another an English enthusiast for revolutionary liberty
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- the revolutionist is unhappy in love and incapable of adjusting to the stodgy stability of upper middle-class
English society, while the refugee finally triumphs with her practical sense and her ability to profit from the
customs and conventions of society
GOTHICISM
- the term is derived from the frequent setting of Gothic novels in a gloomy Middle Age castle
- inaugurated by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), flourished at the close of the 18th century
- reacted against comfort and security, political stability, and commercial progress by resisting the rule of reason
- exploits mystery and terror, the supernatural, dark and irrational aspects of human nature, perverse impulses, etc.
- uses past settings, sullen landscapes, decaying mansions, dark dungeons, secret passages, stealthy ghosts, etc.
- features the protagonist of a 'homme fatal', a villain with elements of diabolism, sensuality, and sadistic
perversion, torturing others because being himself tortured by an unspeakable guilt
EDMUND BURKE (1729 - 1797)
- realized how the sublime is related to vastness, infinity, and astonishment, wild and mountainous scenery in
nature, castle ruins and medieval cathedrals in architecture
- recognized that modified danger and pain in Gothic novels produce a 'delightful horror'
- his concepts were influenced by Aristotle's tragedies as evocations of pity and fear purging of these emotions, by
John Milton's Paradise Lost, and William Shakespeare's tragedies
- his own writings however focus on contemporary politics, he was a member of the Parliament and one of the most
polished parliamentary orators of his day
> Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that
Event (1790):
- a political tract attempting to check and condition the libertarian optimism about the first stages of the Revolution
- from a firmly British constitutional standpoint stresses a need for tradition rather than innovation and for
gradualism rather than radicalism
HORACE WALPOLE (1717 - 1797)
- the son of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole (1676 - 1745)
- received university education, undertook a two-year Grand Tour on the continent with the poet Thomas Gray, but
the two quarrelled and Walpole returned to England
- served as Member of Parliament, was devoted to King George II, but politically unambitious
- initiated a neo-Gothic architectural trend with his mock castle built at Strawberry Hill (near Twickenham outside
London) and filled with an eclectic collection of art and a small press
- notable as a connoisseur, antiquarian, art historian, and a figure of considerable cultural importance
> The Castle of Otranto (1764):
- a Gothic novel blending 'two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern', presented as a translation of the
manuscript of a medieval Italian tale of improbable catastrophes
- originally accepted favourably, but vilified by the press when revealed to be not a translation but a contemporary
creation of the politically and socially well-connected son of the Prime Minister
> The Mysterious Mother (1768):
- a Gothic drama, unperformed in his lifetime
- concerned with incest, the mother seduces her ignorant son and gives birth to a daughter whom the son marries,
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not aware who her mother and father are
> Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762 - 1780):
- a four-volume writing on art history, today still a prime source for the study of the early pictorial arts in Britain
> Historic Doubts on Richard III (1768):
- an attempt to rehabilitate the historical character of Richard III, the King of England between 1483 and 1485
> Letters (published posthumously):
- his collected highly readable correspondence with the most important cultural and political figures of his time
> Memoirs (posthumously):
- a portrayal of the Georgian social and political scene, still a useful source for historians, though heavily biased
ANN RADCLIFFE (1764 - 1823)
- started writing when she found herself in a childless marriage, her husband encouraged her literary efforts
- became increasingly famous and financially successful, but quit writing suddenly before the year 1800
- became reclusive in her later life, possibly as a result of an acute lifelong sense of propriety, decorum, and reserve
- her novels were enormously popular in her day, especially with upper and middle class young women
> "On the Supernatural in Poetry" (published in 1826):
- a serious essay presenting her view of her own work
- defines terror, which 'expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life', as contrasted to horror,
which 'contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them', and locates the source of her own fictional sublime in terror
- her notion of the sublime is closer to that of Edmund Burke rather than to the supernatural sensationalism of the
later Gothic novelists
- her own novels blend moralism, aesthetics, and drama, and stand for a more genteel strain of Gothic fiction
- centres her sublime on descriptions of imaginary scenery, pioneers the fictional use of landscape
- her favourite setting is an imaged Italy with solemn or 'peculiar grandeur' serving both to elevate and awe the
spirits of her protagonists, usually decorous and sensible women finding resource in their reasonableness
- her characteristic technique is introducing apparently supernatural events but explaining them afterwards carefully
by purely natural means
- her novels create a bridge between the Augustans with their rationalistic explanations and the Romantics with
their emphasis on the imagination and the supernatural
> The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789):
- sets the tone of the majority of her work, focuses on an innocent but heroic young woman finding herself in a
gloomy castle ruled by a mysterious baron with a dark past
> The Sicilian Romance (1790)
> The Romance of the Forest (1792)
> The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
> The Italian (1797)
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS (1775 - 1818)
- nicknamed 'Monk' Lewis for his most famous Gothic novel
- educated for a diplomatic career, the ethical demerits of The Monk did not interfere with his reception into the
best society, as he was noticed favourably at court, served as a Member of Parliament, etc.
- his Gothic writings stress the supernatural, or horror, as opposed to Ann Radcliffe's stress on the sublime, or terror
> The Monk (1796):
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- a Gothic novel set in a Capuchin friary in Madrid, a small world of repression, obsession, ambition, and intrigue,
starkly contrasting with the calm reflection of Radcliffe's convents
- investigates a tormented soul, semi-pornographically exploits incidents and images implying the labyrinthine
nature of the protagonist's life, but lacks psychological depth
- plays with hidden chambers, subterranean passages, sealed vaults, and other images suggesting concealed passion
- the protagonist Ambrosio, a saintly monk, is led into a life of depravity by a fiend-inspired woman, becomes a
rapist and murderer, and his Faustian compact with the Devil terminates in his physical and spiritual breakdown
and an agonisingly slow death
- from the aesthetic point of view it is often messy, badly constructed, and extravagant in every sense, but includes
some scenes of power
- achieved an immediate celebrity, but threatened to have its sale restrained because of its ethical demerits, the
second edition omitted some objectionable passages, yet retained its horrific character
> The Castle Spectre (1796):
- a melodramatic musical drama, possessing little literary merit, but enjoying a long popularity on the stage
> The Minister (1797):
- a translation from Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, 1784)
> The Bravo of Venice (1804):
- a translation from a German romance, his best known novel second only to The Monk
MARY SHELLEY (1797 - 1851)
- the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft-Godwin and William Godwin, the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley
> Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818):
- originated in the literary circle in Switzerland including the Shelleys, George Gordon Byron, and others, which
discussed philosophy and nature, the origins and meaning of life, the myth of Prometheus, and the enterprise of
modern science, and concluded with a contest for which each member of the circle wrote a 'ghost story'
- the novel is a study of the consequences of experiment, of moving into the unknown, and a morally probing
exploration of responsibility and science, remarkable not only for its 'terror', but also for its prophetic speculation
- its narrative layers include the first person account of the solitary explorer Robert Walton, the confessions of Dr
Frankenstein, and the confessions of the Monster
- draws parallels between the classical myth and a modern experiment, compares Frankenstein successively to
Prometheus, to the Biblical Adam, and to Satan
- the mythical Prometheus is punished by a jealous heaven for resisting the authority of God, the modern
Prometheus Frankenstein is punished by a challenge to his authority on the part of the Monster
- both Adam and the Monster are ruined and questioning, insists on their loneliness and wretchedness, and turn to
accuse their creators with an acute and trained intelligence
- the Monster overhears and grasps something from the reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost and comes to
realize how much he has in common with Milton's Satan
- the Monster ends up a prey to envy, defeat, and unhappiness, which lead him to a jealous destruction
- the novel ends where it began, in a polar wasteland landscape with the shifting ice allowing for the opening of
new perspective and uncertainties
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