Name: Vadher Ankita
Paper: 2 Neoclassical Literature
Topic: Writers of the Neoclassical age.
Sem: 1 , M.A.-2
Roll no: 17
Submitted To,
Dr. Dilip Barad.
Dept. of English,
M.K. Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar.
Neoclassicism:
After the
renaissance a period of exploration and expansiveness came a reach the
direction of order and restraint .This reaction developed in France in the mid
17th century and England thirty years later and it dominated
European literature until the last part of the 18th century.
The period is
called neoclassic because its writers looked back to the ideals and art form of
classic times, emphasizing even more than their Renaissance predecessors the
classical ideals of order and rational central. Neoclassical writers saw in the
classical world their respect for the past led to be conservative both in art
and politics.
Neoclassical thinkers could the past as
a guide for the present because they assumes that human nature was construct essentially the same regardless of
time and place art they believed ,should express this essential nature:
‘’Nothing can pleas many, and please long but just representation of general
nature’’ if human nature has remained construct over the centuries, it is
unlikely that any startling new discovers will be made Hence neoclassical
artists did not strive to be original sonnet as to express old truth in a newly
effective way Neoclassical writers aimed to articulate general truth rather
than unique vision ,to communicate to other more than to express, themselves .
· SOME WRITERS OF Neoclassical age Alexander
pope:
Pope is in many
respects a unique figure. In the first place, he was for a generation ‘’the
poet’’ of a great nation. Poetry was limited in the early 18th
century; there were few lyrics, little or
no love poetry, no epics , no dramas or songs of nature worth
considering ; but in the narrow field of satirist and deductive verse pope was
the undisputed master. Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of
revaluation. His parents were both Catholics who presently presently removed from London and settled in Benfield,
near Windsor, where the poet’s childhood was passed. Partly because of an
unfortunate prejudice against Catholics in the public schools, partly because
of his own weakness and deformity, pope received very little school education.
When only sixteen years old he had written his ‘’Pastorals’’; a few years later
appeared his ‘’Essay on Criticism ‘’, which made him famous. with the
publication of the Rape of the Lock, in 1712, Pope’s name was known and honored all over England, and this dwarf of twenty –four years, by the sheer force of
his own ambition, had jumped to the foremast place in English letters he
cultivated his friendship with Martha Blount, with whom for many years he spent
a good brat of each day, and who remained faithful to him to the end of his
life.
· WORKS OF POPE:
We may separate Pope‘s work in to
three grapes, corresponding to the early, middle and later period of his life.
In the first he wrote his ‘’Pastorals’’, Windsor. Forest ‘’Messiah’’, ‘’essay
on criticism ‘’ and ‘’The Rape of the Lock’’ in the second, his translation of homer;
in the third the Dunked and the epistles, the latter containing the famous
‘’essay on man’’ and the ‘’epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’’, which is in truth his
Apology.
· Essay on criticism:
The ‘’Essay on criticism’’ sum up the art of poetry as
taught first by Horace and Boolean and the 18th century classicism
Though written in heroic couplets, we hardly consider this as a poem but rather
as a storehouse of critical maxims.
· The Rape of the Lock
The Rape of the Lock
is a Masterpiece of its kind and comes nearer to being a ‘’Creation’’ than
anything else that pope has written .A Fop at the court of Quinine, one Lord peter snipped a lock of hair from the abundant curls of a pretty maid of honour
named Arbela Femur. The young lady reserved named it, and the two families were
Plunged in to a quarrel which was the talk of London pope however, went for
weed of his masters in style and in delicacy of handling a mock heroic theme and during his lifetime the Rape of the Lock
was considered as the greatest poem of its kind in all literature.
· Pope’s Translation
The fame of pope’s Iliad which was financially
the most successful of his books it was due to the fact that he interpreted
translated the entire Iliad Homer in the elegant, artificial language of his
own age. Pope translated the entire Iliad and half of the ‘’Essay’’ is the best
known and the most quoted of all pope’s works.
· The Duncan
It’s began originally as a controversy concerning
shakes per, but turned out to be a cores and revengeful satire upon all the literary men of the age who had
aroused Pope’s anger by their criticism or lack of appreciation of his genius.
Among the rest of his numerous works the reader will find Pope’s estimate of
best set forth in his ‘’Epistle to Dr. Arbuth no and it will be well to close
our study of this strange Mixture of vanity and greatness will ‘’The Universal
prayer’’ which shows at least the pope had considered and judge himself.
· Joseph Addison
Addison is easily master in
the pleasure art of living with one’s fellows, It’s due to his prefect
expression of that art, of that new social life which, as we have noted,was
characteristic of the Age of Anne that Addison Occupies such a large place in
the history of literate Addison is the sunshine ,which melts the ice and dries
the mud and makes the earth thing with light and hope.
Two things
Addison did for our literature which are of instigate value. First he overcame
a certain corrupt tendency bequeathed by Restoration literature. It was the
apparent aim of the low drama, and even of much of the poetry of that age, to
make virtue ridiculous and vice attractive. Addison’s purpose was to strip off
the mask of vice to show its ugliness and deformity, but the reveal virtue in
its own native, loveliness. And second , prompted and aided by the more
original genius of his friend Steele, Addison seized upon the new social life
of the chubs made it the subject of endless pleasant essay upon types of men
and manners. The Totter and The spectator are the begging of the modern essay;
and their studies of human characters.
He was
born in born in Milton, Wiltshire, in 1672.His father was a scholarly English
clergyman, and all his life Addison followed naturally the quiet and cultured
ways to which he was early accustomed .At the famous chapter house school in
London and in his university life oxford he excelled in character and schooner
ship and became known as a writer of graceful verses.
· Works of Addison
Addison’s works are
his famous essays, collection from the Tattler and spectator. These essays are
a perpetual inducement to others to know and to practice the same fine art. To
an age of knowledge, fundamental coarseness and artificiality he came with a
wholesome message of refinement and simplicity. Addison’s success knowledge of
life and his greater faith in men. He attacks all the little vanities and all
the big vices of his time. Addison‘s ‘’Dissection of a beau’s ‘’and his
‘’Dissection of a coquette Heart’’ is to know at once the secret of the
latter’s more enduring influence.In style these essays are remarkable as showing the glowing perfection
of the English language. Addison essays are well worth reading once far their
own sake and many times for their influence in shaping a clear and graceful
style of writing.
· Richard Steele
Steele was in
almost every respect the antithesis of his friend and fellow worrier a
rollicking, good hearten emotional, lovable Irish man. He left the university
to entire the Hurries guards. He was in turn soldier, captain, poet playwright
essayist, Member of Parliament, twenty other things even more than Addison he
ridicules vice and makes virtue lovely He is the originator of the Tatter and
joins with Addison in creating the spectator.
· The Tatter and The Spectator
Steele was awarded
the position of official gazetteer. While in this position and writing for
several small newspapers, the idea occurs to Steele to publish a paper which
should contained not only the political news, but also the gossip of the clubs
and coffeehouses, with some light essays
on the life and manners of the age. The Tatter first number of which
appeared April 12, 1709. It was a small folio sheet appearing on post days,
three times a weeks and it sold for a penny a copy. Steele at first wrote the
entire paper and signed his essays with the name of Isaac Bicker staff. Steele
lost his position as gazetteer and the
Tatter was discontinued after less and the Tatter was discontinued after
less and the Tatter was disconcerting after
less than two years life Two months later on march 1,1711 appears the
first number of the spectator . it’s in the incomparable spectator papers that
Addison shoes himself most ‘’worth to be remembered’’ he contributed the
majority of its essays .In the short space of four years in which Addison and
Steele worked together .the light essay was established as one of the most
important forms of modern literature, and the literary magazine was its place
as the expression of the social life of a nation.
· John Dryden
John Dryden occupies
a seminal place in English critical history and affirmed of his essay of
Dramatic poetry. Dryden’s critical works was extensive, treating of various
genres such as epic tragedy ,comedy and dramatic theory, satire the relative
virtues of ancient and modern writers as well as the nature of poetry and
translation Dryden was also a consummate poet dramatist and translator .His
poetic output reflects his shifting religious
and political allegiances. Dryden was appointed poet laureate in 1668
and thereafter produced several major poems including the mock heroic ‘’Mac
fleck on’’ and a political satire Absalom and Acidophil. He was renowned and
tragedies Aurangzeb and All for love, or the world well lost.
Dryden’s essay of
Dramatic poetry is written as a debate on drama conduct by four speakers, Eugenics crimes, Lisideius, and Need lisideious refer to Sir Charles sadly
and Meander is Dryden himself. In his Essay he suggests that the chief purpose
of his text is ‘’to vindicate the honour of our English writers, from the
censure of those who unjustly prefer the French’’. The first of these debates
is that between ancient and moderns, a debate that had intermittently surfaced
for centuries in literature and criticism Dryden essay is an important
intervention in this debate perhaps marking a distinction between Renaissance
and Neoclassical values.
In Dryden text this
compromises subsumes a number of debates one of these concerns the classical
‘’unities’’ of time ,place and action; another focuses on the rigid classical
distinction between various genre such as tragedy and comedy there was also the
issue of classical decorum and propriety ,as well as the use of rhyme in drama.
The most fundament of these classical rules is the three unities of time action
place crisis claims that the ancient observed these rules in most of their
plays. The unity of action ,cities urges stipulates that the ‘’poet’ is to aim
at one great and complete action to which all other things in play are to be
subservient most modern plays says critics fail to endure the test imposed by
these unities and we must therefore acknowledge the superiority of the ancient
authors. In his essay on criticism pope had urged that to copy nature is to
copy the ancient writers not only do we have the collective experience and
wisdom of the ancient to draw upon ,but also we have our own experience of the
world a world understood far better in scientific terms than in ages past. What
Mender takes as a valid presupposing is that a play should present a lively
imitation of hum our and passions.
The Finical debate concern the use of rhyme in drama critics argues that
rhyme is unnatural in a play Following Artists critics insists that the most
natural verse forms for the stage is blank verse since ordinary speech follows
an iambic pattern. Meander’s reply is he does not deny that blank verse may be
used ;but he asserts that in series plays where the subject and characters are
great rhyme is there as nature and more effectual than blank verse. In everyday
life people do not speak in blank verse any more than they do rhyme.