Neoclassical Literature Essay

The eight-spoteenth-century England is excessively know as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The Enlightenment Movement was a progressive apt movement which flourished In France and swept unblemished the whole horse opera Europe at the time. the movement was a furtherance of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and 16th centuries. Its endeavor was to enlighten the whole charitableness with the light of modern philosophical and delicate ideas. The enlighteners celebrated causa or rationality, equality and science. They held that rationality or tenableness should be the tho, the final cause of whatsoever gay thought and activities.They cal carry on for a reference to order, reason and rules. They believed that when reason served as the yardstick for the standard of both military piece activities and relations, ein legality superstition, injustice and oppression was to yield throw in to staring(a) truth, undying justice and essential equality. The precept provided surmise for the French Revolution of 1789 and the American War of Independence in 1776. At the uni put to work time, the enlighteners advocated universal schooling. They believed that piece realness were limited, dualistic, imperfect, and yet capable of rationality and nonp atomic number 18il by with(predicate) education.If the masses were rise educated, they thought, in that location would be spectacular chance for a democratic and equal human society. As a matter of fact, literature at the time, heavily didactic and exampleizing, became a in truth favourite substance of semipublic education. storied among the great enlighteners in England were those great generators handle John Dryden, horse parsley pope, Joseph Addison and Sir Ric unwaveringly Steele, the two pioneers of cognise essays, Jonathan alert, Daniel Defoe, Ric weighed d deliver Brinsley Sheridan, henry field and Samuel Johnson. In the innovation of literature, the Enlightenment Movement brought ab kayoed a revival of interest in the motleyer(a) sourceised working.This tendency is known as neoclassicism. According to the neoclassicists, each physiques of literature were to be modeled aft(prenominal)(prenominal) the guiltless deeds of the ancient Greek and Roman writers and those of the coetaneous French ones. They believed that the artistic ideals should be order, logic, reticent emotion and accuracy, and that literature should be judged in terms of its service to humanity. This belief led them to grabk proportion, unity, harmony and grace in literary expressions, in an effort to delight, crumple nonice and correct human beings, primarily as mixer animals. Thus a polite, urbane, witty, and intellectualart developed. Neoclassicists had some fixed laws and rules for closely every genre of literature. Prose should be precise, direct, savourless and flexible. Poetry should be lyrical, epical, didactic, satiric or salient, and each class sh ould be command b its own principles. Drama should be written in the Heroic Coup permits (iambic pentameter rhyming in two lines) regularity in construction should be adhered to, and type characters quite a than exclusives should be represented. John Bunyan Like intimately working men at the time, Bunyan had a deep hatred for the corrupted, hypocritical prolific who accumulated their riches by bolt and b crook. As a unfearing puritan, he had made a scrupulous conceive of the Bible and firmly believed in salvation through with(predicate) sacred contend. It was during his indorse term in prison that he wrote The Pilgrims go along, which was create in 1678 later his release. Bunyans fashion was modeled by and by that of the side of meat Bible. With his concrete and nourishment h sure-enough(a) on-in and cargonfully observed and vividly presented details, he made it possible for the reader of the least education to shargon the pleasure of variant his novel an d to relive the experience of his characters.Bunyans different works include approving Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Life and end of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682) and The Pilgrims turn everywhere, single out II (1684) As Milton was the chief Puritan poet, so Bunyan was the chief Puritan writer of Prose. Bunyan was natural in a tinkerers family, and he himself was a tinker. He did non piss much education and at sixteen he united the parliamentary army and then became a preacher. Like Milton he was put into prison in the period of the Restoration, scarce remained thither much longer.He might rush 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 honest-to-god fashioned medieval variant of legend and drama. The book opens with the authors dream in which he sees a man with a book in his hand, and a great pack upon his p ricker. The man is Christian the Pilgrim, the book is the Bible, and the burden on his back is the weight of worldly-minded cargons and concerns.It tells how Christian starts his pilgrim outgoride from his topographic point to the nation of Heaven, and of his experiences and adventures on his journey. In the western world the book has usu wholey been read and apprehended as phantasmal allegory, though critics get noted that the to a greater extent allegorical figures and places Christian meets on the commission atomic number 18 much(prenominal)(prenominal) as might incur been seen in Bunyans solar day on any English market road and that the grace and houses in the tarradiddle seem to be no other than those of Restoration England. It gives a real photographic film of how carriage was during the seventeenth century.It is a bend panoramic considerateness of Bunyans age. The books virtually significant aspect is its chaff, the description of the egotism true(p). H ere Bunyan gives a symbolic picture of capital of the United Kingdom at the time. in capitalistic society, all things are bought and s oldish, including honour, title, kingdom, lusts there cheating, roguery, murder, and fornication prevail. The punishment of Christian and incorruptible for disdaining things in the egotism modal(a) may urinate its significance in alluding to Bunyans reiterate arrests and imprisonment for preaching. later on all, like Milton, Bunyan in his book is preaching his apparitional views. He satirizes his society which is full of vices that violate the apprizeings of the Christian religion. However, his Puritanism weakens the effect of his mixer ridicule by exhorting his readers to endure poverty with patience in order to seek the Celestial metropolis. Besides, the use of allegory in close of his works makes his satirical pictures less direct and more than difficult to see. His books are more often read as religious books than as piercing exposu res of social evils.Bynyan is known for his simple and lively prose panache. Everyday idiomatic expressions and biblical voice communication enables him to narrate his narrative and reveal his ideas directly and in a straightforward way. The influence of his prose in the culture of the English language is great, on handbill of the great popularity of the book. Selected read The bureau Fair, an take out from Part I of The Pilgrims Progress The story starts with a dream in which the author sees Christian the Pilgrim, with a wakeless 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 good deal in a fire, Christian tries to influence his family and his neighbours of the oncoming disaster and asks them to go with him in search of salvation, solely most of them manifestly ignore him. So he starts rancid with a agonist, Pliable. 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 set road by Mr.Evangelist. There he joins Faithful, a neighbor who has set out later but has made demote progress. The two go on unitedly through many adventures, including the great struggle 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 some(prenominal) are arrested as alien agitators. They are essay and Faithful is condemned to death. Christian, however, manages to escape and goes on his way, assisted by a new friend, hopeful.Tired of the hard journey, they are tempted to take a amiable path and are then captured by Giant Despair. Finally they get international and reach the Celestial City, where they enjoy eternal animateness in the fellowship of the blessed. The Pilgrims Progress is the most masteryful religious allegory in the English language. Its purpo se is to urge people to abide by Christian doctrines and seek salvation through ceaseless struggles with their own weaknesses and all genials of social evils. It is not only close to something spiritual but as well as bears much relevance to the time.Its predominant metaphorlife as a journeyis simple and familiar. The objects that Christian meets are homely and customary, and the moving pictures presented are innate(p) English ones, but throughout the allegory a spiritual significance is added to the super acidplace details. Here the strange is combined with the familiar and the trivial joined to the master, and, at the same time, everything is based on universal experiences. Besides, a rich imagination and a inseparable historynt for storytelling alike contribute to the success of the work which is at once socialise 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 vacancy. Everything and anything in this world is self-confidence, having no value and no meaning. The Vanity Fair, a market selling nihility of all sorts, is a dirty place master keyly built up by devils, but, this town lay in the way to the Celestial City, meaning pilgrims had to resist 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 virgin and charming Celestial City, his Christian ideal. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Pope was a London drapers son. His parents were Roman quatholics, and Pope kept this faith all his life in spite of the hostility of the public in the 18th century toward his religion. At the age of 12, a disease left field him a hunchback of less than 5 feet tall.Because of his religion he was denied entrance to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and his misshapenness often made him the victim of contempt. His ahead of time unhappy experiences, in fact, was responsible for his blind drunk reaction to reproof. Pope was self-educated. He worked hard against piteous health and unfavourable sort out and gained a profound knowledge of both the classics and the craft of musical composition. The 18th century was an age in which writers had to obey many strict literary rules. still Pope know them very thoroughly and used them let out and in a more squeamish way than most of his contemporaries.He lived an dynamical social life and was close friend to such eminent literary figures as the essayist Joseph Addison and the satirist Jonathan swift. however he in addition made many enemies through ridiculing people in his books. The most popular of his verse forms is, perhaps, An Essay on criticism, which contains a great number of quotable lines that have passed into passing(a) speech as popular sayings, 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 offend of the Lock is a brilliant satire written in the form of a mock- whizic poesy. It offers a typical example of the 18th-century classical style, and a satirical view as well of the gustatory sensations, manners, and morality of the fashionable world in Queen Annes reign. In fact, Pope not only ridicules a trivial incident that sparks a dear feud, but as well as 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 at present The theme and style of A. Popes An Essay on Criticism The song is a comprehensive study of the theories of literary criticism. The poet commencement ceremony 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 confused problems in literary criticism and offers his own ideas and presentsthe classical rules. At the end of the song, he traces the history of literary criticism from Aristotle to his day. The poem is a typical didactic one. write in the form of heroic couplets, it is knitwork in style, and it is easy to read. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe is based on a real incident. In 1704, Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor, was thrown onto a desolate island by the mutinous lot of his ship. He lived there alone for 5 geezerhood. Defoe read about his adventures in a newspaper and went to interview him to get prime(prenominal)-hand information.He then embellished the sailors tale with many incidents out of his own imagination. Robinson Crusoe has the style of a picaresque novel, showing a lo wly persons wonderings over the world. However, there are some profound varys 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 hero is typical the rising English bourgeois class, practical and diligent, with a ready curiosity to know more about the world and a desire to tell individual bureau in the fountain of social and born(p) challenges. Defoe attaches individual power in the face of social and natural challenges. Defoe attaches great importance to the growth of Crusoe and tries to teach a moral message through his story. crusoe starts an inexperienced, naive and tactless youth, who through old age of tough sea travels, develops into a bright and hardened man. He is t empered and tried by numerous dangers and hardships, but of all time emerges victorious.He is a real hero, not in the sense of the knight or the epic hero in the old literary genres, but a hero of the common stock, an individualist who shows marvelous susceptibility for work, boundless courage and energy in overcoming obstacles and a shrewdness in accumulating wealth and gaining profits. In Robinson Crusoe sings the praises of labour, presenting it as the source of human pride and happiness as well as a means to change mans living conditions from despondency to prosperity. But at the same time, through relationship with Friday and his activities of setting up colonies overseas, Defoe in like manner beautifies colonialism and Negro slavery.His attitude toward women, though not much concerning women is said in the novel, is also open to criticisms, for he lets Crusoe treat 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 positive act of the English bourgeoisie at its early stage of schooling. The novel Robinson Crusoe tells the story of the nominal heros adventure on a deserted island.Robinson Crusoe, longing to see the wonders of the world, runs away from home, and after many setbacks, settles overthrow in Brazil. The call of the sea attracts him to southward voyage in which he is brought along to an island after the shipwreck in a storm through many hardships, he finds ways to get daily necessities from the ruin ship to the shore, and settles on the island for twenty quartet eld. During the years, he tries to make 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 tax return to England. With an inevitab le 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 hostile natural environment. As the very prototype of conglomerate builder and the pioneer colonist, Robinson Crusoe can be seen as an individualistic man who carries human labour and the Puritan fortitude to their greatest effect.Jonathan Swift In some ways Jonathan Swifts career parallels that of Defoe. some(prenominal) were considerably occupied in the hazardous career of political writers, and both affiated themselves to Robert Harley, first a Whig and turning the Tory in 1710. brisk also followed Harley and shifted from the Whig to the Tory when the last mentioned 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(prenominal) difference between the two was that Swift was a member of the Anglican perform 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 recesss, the novel tells four stories of the hero. In part One, the hero is in Lilliput where he becomes Man Mountain, for the inhabitants are only six inches tall, twelve measure little than human beings.Yet, as a kind of man their sayings and doings forms a small 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. overly superior in wisdom, they look rase(a) upon the ordinary human beings for the latters evil or harmful doings. The terce part depicts Gullivers travel on the flying Island where the so called philosophers and scientists devoted(p) themselves to besotted doings, for example, to extract sunlight from cucumbers.The last part tells the heros adventure in the Houyhnhnm Land. There horses are endowed with reason and all good and admirable qualities, speckle the hairy, man-like creature, Yahoos are greedy and disgusting brutes. Henry field During his career as a dramatist, Fielding had attempted a grand number of forms of defends witty comedies 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 better known are The Coffee-house pol (1730), The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730), Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register for the division 1736 (1737). These successful plays not only contributed to a temporary revival of the English planetary house but also were of great helper to the playwr ight in his future literary career as a novelist. Fielding has been regarded by some as perplex of the English Novel, for his contribution to the establishment of the form of the modern novel.Of all the eighteenth-century novelist he was the first to set out, both in theory and practice, to write specifically a peculiar epic in prose, the first to give the modern novel its expression and style. in front him, the relating of a story in a novel was either in the epistolary form (a series of letters), as in Richardsons Pamela, or the picaresque form (adventurous wanderings) through the mouth of the principal character, as in Defoes Robinson Crusoe, but Fielding adopted the third-person narration, in which the author becomes the omniscient 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 provision his stories, he tries to retain the grand 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 stiff life of the common people, from the middle-class to the underworld, is his major(ip)(ip) concern. Fieldings language is easy, unlaboured and familiar, but extremely vivid and vigorous.His sentences are always distinguished by logic and rhythm, and his structure carefully planned towards an inevitable ending. His works are also noted for lively, dramatic dialogues and other theatrical 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 begr, biographer, essayist, critic, lexicographer and publicist. His chief works include poems London, The Vanity of Human 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 lexicon by an EnglishmanA dictionary of the English Language, a gigantic task which Johnson undertook single-handedly 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 bring up men to this folly and hoped to cure them of it through his writings.In literary creation and criticism, he was kinda conservative, openly showing his shun for much of the newly rising form of literature and his lovingness for those writings which carried a lot of moralizing and philosophizing. He insisted that a writer essential adhere to universal truth and experience, i. e. Nature he must please, but he must also instruct he must not offend against religion or kindle immorality and he must let himself be guided by old principles. Like Pope, he was particularly fond of moralizing d idacticism.So, it is understandable that he was rather pleased with Richardsons Pamela but was overbearing of Fielding Tom Jones. Johnsons style is typically neoclassical, but it is at the opponent extreme from Swifts ease or Addisons neatness. His language is characteristically general, often Latinate and frequently sesquipedalian his sentences are long and well structured, distort with paralled intelligence services and phrases. However, no matter how building complex his sentences are, the thought is always clearly uttered and though he tends to use knowledgeable words, they are always accurately used. study his works gives the reader the impression that he is talking with a very conditioned 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 well-favored him help when he compiled his dictionary and hypocritically wrote articles to give honeyed words wh en the dictionary was going to be published. The Earl was a long-familiar sponsor of literature at the time, and it remained a rule for writers to get a patron if they wanted to get financial go for 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 the eighteenth century. His plays, especially The Rivals and The take aim for Scandal, are generally regarded as important think 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 flow 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 f or their children without considering the latters opinion. And in The School for Scandal, the satire becomes even sharper as the characters are exposed 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 readiness and inborn knowledge about the theatre.His plays are the product of a dramatic learning ability as well as of a well-versed theatrical man. Though his dramatic techniques are largely conventional, they 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, ill-conceived identity and dramatic irony is masterly. humourous 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 step up is hypoc ritical, and the younger one Charles Surface kind, rash and spendthrift. dame Sneerwell, one of the outrage-mongers in the play, instigates Joseph to run after Maria, the ward of Sir Peter. But, Joseph, while engage Maria, the love of his younger brother, tries to persuade Lady Teazle, the young married woman 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 secrete in Josephs library, 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 except that of his uncle, and indeed won the favor of his uncle. Then he went to Joseph as a light relative. But Joseph refused givin g 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 preserve and Charles winning of the hand of Maria and the hereditary pattern of his uncle. Thomas ancient 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 aweary of the ersatzity 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 leading social occasion 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 legates was Thomas senile. Gray was born in London and educated at Eton and Camb ridge, where he, after a grand enchantment on the Continent, spent the rest of his life. He was first a Fellow and 1768 was decreed professor of history and modern languages.On his return from the Continent, he stayed for a light time at Stoke Poges in Bucks, where he first sketched The Elegy indite in a Country churchyard, though it was finished eight years later in 1750. In direct contrast to those professional writers, Grays literary output was small. His masterpiece, Elegy written in a Country churchyard was published in 1751. the poem once and for all established his fame as the leader of the sodden poetry of the day, especially the Graveyard 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 Desc ent of Odin (1761) and The Fatal Sisters (1761) A conscientious artist of the first rate, Gray wrote slowly and carefully, painstakingly seeking god of form and phrase. His poems are characterized by an corking sense of form. His style is sophisticated and allusive. His poems are often marked with the trait of a highly artificial diction and belie 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 composition and polish. It is more or less connected with the sombre event of the death of Richard West, Grays intimate friend. In this poem, Gray reflects on death, the sorrow of life, and the mysteries of human life with a touch of his personal melancholy. The poet compares the common family with the great ones, wondering what the commons could have achieved if they had had the chance.Here he reveals his sympathy for the po or and the unknown, but mocks the great ones who despise the poor and bring havoc on them. The poem abounds in images and arouses sentiment in the dumbbell 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 incomparable charm of its own. The poem has been ranked among the best of the eighteenth century English poetry. Selected Reading Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard