Neoclassical Literature Essay

The octonaryeenth-century England is as wellhead cognise as the Age of En shadowyenment or the Age of Reason. The Enligh tennerment Movement was a progressive intellectual movement which flourished In France and swept d adept the each in each(prenominal) Western Europe at the clock. the movement was a furtherance of the reincarnation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and guileistic ideas. The enlighteners celebrated reason or rationality, comparability and science. They held that rationality or reason should be the only, the final cause of whatsoever military mankind thought and activities.They c tout ensembleed for a reference to order, reason and rules. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the measurement of all human activities and relations, every(prenominal) superstition, injustice and unityrousness was to yield place to eternal truth, eternal justi ce and congenital equality. The article of belief provided theory for the French Revolution of 1789 and the American contend of Independence in 1776. At the uni put to work time, the enlighteners advocated universal education. They believed that human being were limited, dualistic, imperfect, and yet sufficient of rationality and perfection through education.If the masses were well educated, they thought, thither would be colossal chance for a democratic and equal human society. As a matter of fact, books at the time, heavily didactic and moralizing, became a very popular means of public education. Famous among the bully enlighteners in England were those great writers like John Dryden, Alexander pontiff, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, the twain starts of familiar essays, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, enthalpy Fielding and Samuel Johnson. In the field of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought about a revival of inte emit in the centenarian classical blend ins.This tendency is roll in the hayn as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists, all contrives of literature were to be modeled aft(prenominal) the classical works of the ancient Greek and papist writers and those of the contemporary French ones. They believed that the operativeic ideals should be order, logic, restrained emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. This belief led them to seek proportion, unity, harmony and state of grace in literary expressions, in an effort to delight, instruct and correct human beings, primarily as mixer animals. Thus a polite, urbane, witty, and intellectualart developed. Neoclassicists had some fixed laws and rules for al close every genre of literature. Prose should be precise, direct, fluent and flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or spectacular, and each class should be guided b its own principles. Drama should be writt en in the Heroic Couplets (iambic pentameter rhymed in two lines) regularity in twist should be adhered to, and type characters rather than singles should be represented. John Bunyan Like nigh working men at the time, Bunyan had a deep hatred for the corrupted, insincere rich who accumulated their wealthiness by hook and b crook. As a stout Puritan, he had do a conscientious sight of the Bible and firmly believed in salvation through spiritual struggle. It was during his s create term in prison that he wrote The Pilgrims go along, which was print in 1678 after his release. Bunyans flair was modeled after that of the face Bible. With his concrete and nutrition langu duration and c arfully observed and vividly presented details, he made it possible for the reader of the least education to sh ar the pleasure of cultivation his young and to re put up the experience of his characters.Bunyans opposite works overwhelm Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682) and The Pilgrims Progress, Part II (1684) As Milton was the chief Puritan poet, so Bunyan was the chief Puritan writer of Prose. Bunyan was born in a diddles family, and he himself was a tinker. He did non vex such(prenominal) education and at sixteen he joined the parliamentary legions and then became a preacher. Like Milton he was put into prison in the period of the Restoration, further remained there more than longer.He susceptibility grant written his work The Pilgrims Progress in prison although it was published in prison although it was published in 1678 after his release. The Pilgrims Progress is written in the old fashioned medieval form of apologue and drama. The obtain opens with the authors reverie in which he sees a man with a retain in his hand, and a great center upon his subscribe. The man is Christian the Pilgrim, the book is the Bible, and the burden on his back is the weight of worldly c argons an d concerns.It tells how Christian starts his pilgrim advance from his home to the kingdom of Heaven, and of his experiences and adventures on his travel. In the western world the book has usually been read and comprehended as religious apologue, though critics have noned that the numerous delegate figures and places Christian meets on the way argon such as might have been seen in Bunyans day on any position market road and that the landscape and houses in the story seem to be no other than those of Restoration England. It erupts a real picture of how disembodied spirit was during the 17th century.It is a faithful panoramic reflection of Bunyans age. The books most significant aspect is its satire, the description of the conceitedness sensible. hither Bunyan gives a symbolic picture of London at the time. in cautious society, all things be bought and sold, including honour, title, kingdom, lusts there cheating, roguery, murder, and adultery prevail. The punishment of Ch ristian and penny-pinching for disdaining things in the Vanity passably may have its significance in alluding to Bunyans repeated arrests and imprisonment for preaching.After all, like Milton, Bunyan in his book is preaching his religious charms. He satirizes his society which is full of vices that violate the teachings of the Christian religion. However, his Puritanism weakens the effect of his complaisant satire by exhorting his readers to endure poverty with industry in order to seek the Celestial City. Besides, the use of allegory in most of his works coiffures his satirical pictures less direct and lots difficult to see. His books are more often read as religious books than as piercing exposures of social corruptives.Bynyan is known for his simple and lively prose style. occasional idiomatic expressions and biblical phraseology enables him to narrate his story and reveal his ideas instantaneously and in a straightforward way. The influence of his prose in the develop ment of the side language is great, on account of the great popularity of the book. Selected Reading The Vanity Fair, an pull out from Part I of The Pilgrims Progress The story starts with a dream in which the author sees Christian the Pilgrim, with a heavy burden on his back, reading the Bible.When he learns from the book that the city in which he and his family live shall be burnt level in a fire, Christian tries to move his family and his neighbours of the on feeler disaster and asks them to go with him in search of salvation, but most of them simply ignore him. So he starts off with a friend, amenable. Pliable turns back after they stumble into a pit, the Slough of Despond. Christian struggles on by himself. Then he is misled by Mr. Worldly Wiseman and is brought back onto the full road by Mr.Evangelist. There he joins Faithful, a neighbor who has mountain out by and by but has made better progress. The two go on together through many adventures, including the great strug gle with Apollyon, who claims them to be his subjects and refuses to accept their allegiance to God. After many other adventures they come to the Vanity Fair where both are arrested as alien agitators. They are tried and Faithful is condemned to finis. Christian, however, manages to escape and goes on his way, assisted by a pertly friend, hopeful.Tired of the hard journey, they are tempted to take a pleasant data track and are then captured by Giant Despair. Finally they get apart and reach the Celestial City, where they enjoy eternal life in the family unit of the blessed. The Pilgrims Progress is the most successful religious allegory in the incline language. Its purpose is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through constant struggles with their own weaknesses and all kinds of social evils. It is not only about something spiritual but excessively surrenders very much relevance to the time.Its predominant metaphorlife as a journeyis simple a nd familiar. The objects that Christian meets are homely and prosaic, and the scenes presented are typical side ones, but throughout the allegory a spiritual significance is added to the commonplace details. Here the strange is combined with the familiar and the vapid joined to the manufacturing business, and, at the corresponding time, everything is commit on universal experiences. Besides, a rich idea and a infixed talent for storytelling also contribute to the success of the work which is at once entertaining and morally instructive.The meaning of Vanity Fair, and its reflection of the theme of the allegory of The Pilgrims Progress The Vanity Fair symbolizes human world, for all that cometh is vanity. Everything and anything in this world is vanity, having no measure out and no meaning. The Vanity Fair, a market merchandising nothingness of all sorts, is a dirty place originally built up by devils, but, this town lay in the way to the Celestial City, meaning pilgrims had to stand the temptations there when they made their way through.So, the depiction of the Fair in selling things worldly and in attracting people bad, represents John Bunyans rejection of the worldly seeking and pious longing for the pure and charming Celestial City, his Christian ideal. Alexander pope (1688-1744) Pope was a London drapers son. His parents were Roman Catholics, and Pope kept this faith all his life in wound of the hostility of the public in the 18th century toward his religion. At the age of 12, a disease left him a hunchback of less than 5 feet tall.Because of his religion he was denied entrance to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and his deformity often made him the victim of contempt. His early unhappy experiences, in fact, was responsible for his strong reaction to criticism. Pope was self-educated. He worked hard against poor health and unfavourable condition and gained a profound knowledge of both the classics and the craft of writing. The 18th century was an age in which writers had to obey many strict literary rules. alone Pope mastered them very thoroughly and used them better and in a more skillful way than most of his contemporaries.He lived an active social life and was close friend to such eminent literary figures as the essayist Joseph Addison and the satirist Jonathan Swift. But he also made many enemies through ridiculing people in his literature. The most popular of his poesys is, perhaps, An Essay on criticism, which contains a great number of quotable lines that have passed into everyday delivery as popular apothegms, such as To err is human, to forgive divine, and For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. However, as a piece of literary theory, it lacks original ideas.Its significance comes from its assertion that literary criticism is an art form and should function actively like a living organism. The Rape of the seal in is a brilliant satire written in the form of a mock-heroic poem. It offers a typical exam ple of the 18th-century classical style, and a satirical view as well of the tests, address, and morals of the fashionable world in pouffe Annes reign. In fact, Pope not only ridicules a trivial incident that sparks a serious feud, but also mocks the highflown style and language of epic poetry itself.The Dunciad, meaning the study of the dunces, launches attacks on everyone who had ever criticized or insulted him, many of whom are totally unknown to the readers of today The theme and style of A. Popes An Essay on Criticism The poem is a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism. The poet kickoff laments the loss of true taste in poetic criticism of his day and calls on people to take classical writers as their models. Then he discusses various problems in literary criticism and offers his own ideas and presentsthe classical rules. At the end of the poem, he traces the archives of literary criticism from Aristotle to his day. The poem is a typical didactic one. p en in the form of heroic couplets, it is plain in style, and it is easy to read. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe is based on a real incident. In 1704, Alexander Selkirk, a frugal sailor, was thrown onto a desolate island by the mutinous crew of his transfer. He lived there alone for 5 years. Defoe read about his adventures in a newspaper and went to interview him to get archetypal-hand information.He then embellished the sailors tale with many incidents out of his own imagination. Robinson Crusoe has the appearance of a dishonest raw, showing a lowly psyches wonderings over the world. However, there are some fundamental changes in Defoes book. A picaro (Spanish for a rogue) is somebody with a doubtful moral character who does not have a fixed goal in life. Nor does he care much about accumulating money. Robinson Crusoe is in fact a new species of writing which inhabits the picaresque frame with a story in the shape of a journal and has a strong flavour of journalistic truth.The h ero is typical the ascending position bourgeois class, practical and diligent, with a restless curiosity to know more about the world and a desire to prove individual military unit in the face of social and natural challenges. Defoe attaches individual power in the face of social and natural challenges. Defoe attaches great importance to the gain of Crusoe and tries to teach a moral message through his story. crusoe starts an inexperienced, naive and inapt youth, who through years of tough sea travels, develops into a clever and hard-boiled man. He is tempered and tried by numerous dangers and hardships, but ever emerges victorious.He is a real hero, not in the signified of the dub or the epic hero in the old literary genres, but a hero of the common stock, an individualist who shows marvelous capacity for work, illimitable courage and energy in overcoming obstacles and a shrewdness in accumulating wealth and gaining profits. In Robinson Crusoe sings the praises of jade, presenting it as the source of human pride and happiness as well as a means to change mans living conditions from desperation to prosperity. But at the same time, through consanguinity with Friday and his activities of setting up colonies overseas, Defoe also beautifies colonialism and Negro slavery.His attitude toward women, though not much concerning women is said in the refreshed, is also open to criticisms, for he lets Crusoe share women as articles of property and as a means to breed and establish a lineage. But on the whole, this novel is significant as the first English novel which glorifies the individual experience of ordinary people in plain and simple language, and also as a vivid and affirmatory portrayal of the English bourgeoisie at its early stage of development. The novel Robinson Crusoe tells the story of the titular heros adventure on a deserted island.Robinson Crusoe, longing to see the wonders of the world, runs away from home, and after many setbacks, settle s down in Brazil. The call of the sea attracts him to second voyage in which he is brought along to an island after the shipwreck in a storm through many hardships, he finds slipway to get daily necessities from the wrecked ship to the shore, and settles on the island for twenty iv years. During the years, he tries to plant himself a living in one way or another, rescues a savage whom he names Friday, and builds up a comfortable home for himself.Finally they are picked up and saved by an English ship and return to England. With an indispensable trace of colonialism, the novel depicts a hero who grows from an inexperienced youth into a shrewd and hardened man. The adventures of Robinson Crusoe on the island is a song of his courage, his wisdom, and his struggle against the remote natural environment. As the very prototype of empire builder and the pioneer colonist, Robinson Crusoe can be seen as an individualistic man who carries human labour and the Puritan fortitude to their g reatest effect.Jonathan Swift In some ways Jonathan Swifts career parallels that of Defoe. Both were considerably occupied in the dangerous career of political writers, and both affiated themselves to Robert Harley, first a Whig and good turn the Tory in 1710. swift also followed Harley and shifted from the Whig to the Tory when the latter came to power in 1710. But they differed from each other in the fact that Defoe was a businessman and did not have much knowledge of the classics whereas Swift was a churchman and a university graduate.Another difference between the two was that Swift was a phallus of the Anglican Church whereas Defoe was a dissenter. Both of them viewed the world with common sense but Defoe aimed to improve the morals of his time, whereas Swift viewed himan society with contempt and has been called a cynic and even a misanthrope. Gullivers Travels Consisting of four parts, the novel tells four stories of the hero. In part One, the hero is in Lilliput where he b ecomes Man mickle, for the inhabitants are only six inches tall, twelve times smaller than human beings.Yet, as a kind of man their sayings and doings forms a little of the real world. Part Two brings the hero to Brobdingnag. This time, he comes to dwarf, for the Brobdingnagians are ten times taller and larger than normal human beings. Also superior in wisdom, they look down upon the ordinary human beings for the latters evil or harmful doings. The third part depicts Gullivers travel on the flying Island where the so called philosophers and scientists devoted themselves to absurd doings, for example, to extract sunlight from cucumbers.The closing curtain part tells the heros adventure in the Houyhnhnm Land. There horses are endowed with reason and all good and admirable qualities, while the hairy, man-like creature, Yahoos are greedy and disgusting brutes. Henry Fielding During his career as a dramatist, Fielding had attempted a considerable number of forms of capers witty comed ies of manners or intrigues in the Restoration tradition, farces or ballad operas with political implications, and burlesques and satires that bear heavily upon the status-quo of England.Of all his plays, the surpass known are The Coffee-house Politician (1730), The tragedy of Tragedies (1730), Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737). These successful plays not only contributed to a temporary revival of the English theatre but also were of great help to the playwright in his future literary career as a novelist. Fielding has been regarded by some as Father of the English Novel, for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.Of all the ordinal-century novelist he was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a comic epic in prose, the first to give the modern novel its structure and style. Before him, the relating of a story in a novel was either in the epistolary form (a series of garners), as in Richardsons Pamela, or the picaresque form (adventurous wanderings) through the mouth of the spark advance character, as in Defoes Robinson Crusoe, but Fielding adopted the third-person narration, in which the author becomes the all-knowing God. He thinks the thought of all his characters, so he is able to present not only their external behaviors but also the internal workings of their minds. In planning his stories, he tries to retain the atomic number 19 epical form of the classical works but at the same time keeps faithful to his realistic presentation of common life as it is. Throughout, the ordinary and usually ridiculous life of the common people, from the middle-class to the underworld, is his major concern. Fieldings language is easy, unlaboured and familiar, but natively vivid and vigorous.His sentences are constantly distinguished by logic and rhythm, and his structure carefully be after towards an inevitable ending. His works are also noted for lively, dramatic dialogues and other theatrical performance devices such as suspense, coincidence and unexpectedness. Samuel Johnson Johnson was an energetic and versatile writer. He had a hand in all the different braches of literary activities. He was a poet, dramatist, prose romancer, biographer, essayist, critic, lexicographer and publicist. His chief works allow in poems London, The Vanity of human race Wishes a romance The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia a tragedy Irene.As a lexicographer, Johnson distinguished himself as the author of the first English enunciationary by an EnglishmanA dictionary of the English Language, a gigantic task which Johnson undertook single-handed and finished in over seven years Johnson was the last great neoclassicist enlightener in the later eighteenth century. He was very much concerned the theme of the vanity of human wishes almost all of his writings bear this theme. He tried to awaken men to this folly and hoped to be restored them of it through his writings.In literary creation and criticism, he was rather conservative, openly showing his dislike for much of the newly rising form of literature and his fondness for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing and philosophizing. He insisted that a writer must adhere to universal truth and experience, i. e. Nature he must please, but he must also instruct he must not offend against religion or promote injustice and he must let himself be guided by old principles. Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing didacticism.So, it is understandable that he was rather pleased with Richardsons Pamela but was contemptuous of Fielding tom Jones. Johnsons style is typically neoclassical, but it is at the opposite extreme from Swifts simplicity or Addisons neatness. His language is characteristically general, often Latinate and frequently polysyllabic his sentences are long and well structured, interwoven with paralled joints and phrases. However, no matter how complex his sentences are, the thought is always clearly expressed and though he tends to use learned words, they are always accurately used.Reading his works gives the reader the impression that he is talking with a very learned man. To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield The letter is regarded as a strong indignation of Samuel Johnson at the Earls fame-fishing, for the later coldly refused giving him help when he compiled his dictionary and hypocritically wrote articles to give honeyed words when the dictionary was going to be published. The Earl was a well-known(a) patron of literature at the time, and it remained a rule for writers to get a patron if they wanted to get financial support or make themselves known by public.But this letter of Johnson made a break-through in that tradition implying their independence in economy and writing, and therefore opened a new era in the development of literature. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Sheridan was the only important English dramatist of th e eighteenth century. His plays, especially The Rivals and The School for Scandal, are generally regarded as important links between the masterpieces of Shakespeare and those of Bernard Shaw, and as true classics in English comedy. In his plays, morality is the constant theme.He is much concerned with the stream moral issues and lashes harshly at the social vices of the day. In The Rivals, a comedy of manners, he is satirizing the traditional practice of the parents to arrange marriages for their children without considering the latters opinion. And in The School for Scandal, the satire becomes even sharper as the characters are open(a) scene by scene to their defenseless nakedness. Sheridans greatness also lies in his theatrical art. He seems to have inherited from his parents a natural ability and inborn knowledge about the theatre.His plays are the product of a dramatic genius as well as of a well-versed theatrical man. Though his dramatic techniques are largely conventional, t hey are exploited to the best advantage. His plots are well organized, his characters, either major or minor, are all sharply drawn, and his manipulation of such devices as disguise, mistaken identity and dramatic irony is masterly. Witty dialogues and neat and decent language also make a characteristic of his plays. The School for Scandal The comedy of manners, written by R. B. Sheridan, mainly tells a story about two brothers.The elder one Joseph Surface is hypocritical, and the younger one Charles Surface kind, imprudent and spendthrift. Lady Sneerwell, one of the filth-mongers in the play, instigates Joseph to run after female horse, the ward of Sir Peter. But, Joseph, while pursuing Maria, the write out of his younger brother, tries to seduce Lady Teazle, the young wife of Sir Peter. Misled by the scandal of Lady Sneerwell and Joseph, Sir Peter Teazle believed Charles was the person who flirted with his wife until one day, Lady Teazle, coming from the screen in Josephs libra ry, made the truth known that person who intended to seduce her was Joseph.Thus, the latters hypocrisy was exposed. At the same time, Sir Oliver Surface, the rich, old uncle of the two brothers, wanted to choose one of them to be his heir. He first visited Charles in the guise of a usurer. Charles sold to him all the family portraits yet that of his uncle, and thus won the favor of his uncle. Then he went to Joseph as a poor relative. But Joseph refused giving him any help by saying that he himself was in trouble. For a second time, Josephs hypocrisy was exposed.The play ends with Lady Teazles reconciliation with her husband and Charles winning of the hand of Maria and the inheritance of his uncle. Thomas color Although neoclassicism dominated the literary scene in the 18th century, there were poets whose poetry had some elements that deviated from the rules and regulations set down by neoclassicist poets. These poets had grown weary of the artificiality and controlling ideals of neoclassicism. They craved for something more natural and spontaneous in thought and language.In their poetry, emotions and sentiments, which had been repressed, began to play a atomic number 82 role again. Another factor marking this deviation is the reawakening of an interest in nature and in the natural relation between man and man. Among these poets, one of the representatives was Thomas Gray. Gray was born in London and educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he, after a grand tour on the Continent, spent the rest of his life. He was first a Fellow and 1768 was appointed professor of narration and modern languages.On his return from the Continent, he stayed for a short time at Stoke Poges in Bucks, where he first sketched The Elegy write in a bucolic Churchyard, though it was finished eight years later in 1750. In contrast to those professional writers, Grays literary output was small. His masterpiece, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was published in 1751. the poem onc e and for all established his fame as the leader of the tender poetry of the day, especially the burying ground School. His poems, as a whole, are mostly devoted to a sentimental lamentation or meditation on life, past and present.His other poems include Ode on the spring (1742), Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1747), Ode on the death of a Favourite Cat (1748), Hymn to Adversity (1742), and two translations for old Norse The Descent of Odin (1761) and The Fatal Sisters (1761) A conscientious artist of the first rate, Gray wrote slowly and carefully, painstakingly seeking perfection of form and phrase. His poems are characterized by an exquisite sense of form. His style is sophisticated and allusive. His poems are often marked with the trait of a highly artificial diction and distorted word order.Selected Reading Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Elegy written in a Country Churchyard is regarded as Grays best and most representative work. The poem is the outcome of about eight years careful constitution and tweak. It is more or less connected with the melancholy event of the death of Richard West, Grays intimate friend. In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the rue of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The poet compares the common menage with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance.Here he reveals his benevolence for the poor and the unknown, but mocks the great ones who despise the poor and bring carnage on them. The poem abounds in images and arouses sentiment in the bosom of every reader. Though the use of artificial poetic diction and distorted word order make understanding of the poem somewhat difficult, the artistic polishthe sure control of language, imagery, rhythm, and subtle moderation of style and tonegives the poem a unique charm of its own. The poem has been ranked among the best of the eighteenth century English poetry. Selected Re ading Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard