Writers of the Neoclassical age.

     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 17^th century and England thirty years later and it dominated European literature until the last part of the 18^th 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 18^th 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 18^th 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.