85-) English Literature

85- ) English Literature 

Neoclassicism

IV. The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (1660-1790 CE)

"Neoclassical" refers to the increased influence of Classical literature upon these centuries. The term neo means new while classical refers to the Roman and Greek classics, hence the name is aptly coined as neoclassical. Neoclassical literature emulated the Greek and Roman styles of writing.

The Neoclassical Period is also called the "Enlightenment" due to the increased reverence for logic and disdain for superstition. The period is marked by the rise of Deism, intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America's revolution against England.

The neoclassical era was closely preceded by the renaissance period. Before the renaissance period, life and literature was mainly dictated by the Church. However, during renaissance, science and innovation was given the main emphasis. Thus, in the neoclassical era, a vast difference between the two ideologies can be witnessed. Therefore, you will find confusion and contrary depictions in neoclassical literature.

The neoclassical era is nestled between the renaissance and romantic periods of literature. Though this period lasted only for around 150 years, its influence can be seen in the literature of today. The neoclassical period of literature is also known as the Enlightenment Period.

Neoclassical authors saw the world under a new light. Unlike the previous two eras, the writers of this era gave more importance to social needs as compared to individual needs. They believed that man can find meaning in society, religion, natural order, government, and literature. In no time, the winds of a new revolution swept through Europe and North America, and changed everything from art and literature to society and fashion, on its way. Though the neoclassical era later transitioned into the romantic era, it left behind a prominent footprint which can be seen in the literary works of today.

The term neo means new while classical refers to the Roman and Greek classics, hence the name is aptly coined as neoclassical. Neoclassical literature emulated the Greek and Roman styles of writing.

The neoclassical era was closely preceded by the renaissance period. Before the renaissance period, life and literature was mainly dictated by the Church. However, during renaissance, science and innovation was given the main emphasis. Thus, in the neoclassical era, a vast difference between the two ideologies can be witnessed. Therefore, you will find confusion and contrary depictions in neoclassical literature. A new class of poets and writers rose out of the flickering ashes of neoclassical literature, and a new genre called Romanticism manifested itself with prominent writers like William Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Shelley, and William Blake.

Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome largely thanks to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, at the time of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its popularity spread across Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, latterly competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th and up to the 21st century.

European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c. 1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Rococo style. Rococo architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and asymmetry; Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity and symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts of Rome and Ancient Greece, and were more immediately drawn from 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Each "neo"-classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The Neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an idea of the generation of Phidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity. The "Rococo" art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra. Even Greece was all-but-unvisited, a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous to explore, so Neoclassicists' appreciation of Greek architecture was mediated through drawings and engravings, which subtly smoothed and regularized, "corrected" and "restored" the monuments of Greece, not always consciously.

The Empire style, a second phase of Neoclassicism in architecture and the decorative arts, had its cultural centre in Paris in the Napoleonic era. Especially in architecture, but also in other fields, Neoclassicism remained a force long after the early 19th century, with periodic waves of revivalism into the 20th and even the 21st centuries, especially in the United States and Russia.

History

Neoclassicism is a revival of the many styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period, which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style.[8] While the movement is often described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism, this is a great over-simplification that tends not to be sustainable when specific artists or works are considered. The case of the supposed main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology.

The writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. His books Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1750) and Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums ("History of Ancient Art", 1764) were the first to distinguish sharply between Ancient Greek and Roman art, and define periods within Greek art, tracing a trajectory from growth to maturity and then imitation or decadence that continues to have influence to the present day. Winckelmann believed that art should aim at "noble simplicity and calm grandeur", and praised the idealism of Greek art, in which he said we find "not only nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images created by the mind alone". The theory was very far from new in Western art, but his emphasis on close copying of Greek models was: "The only way for us to become great or if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients".

The Industrial Revolution saw global transition of human economy towards more efficient and stable manufacturing processes. There was tremendous material advancement and increased prosperity. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe. "Neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of a "classical" model.

In English, the term "Neoclassicism" is used primarily of the visual arts; the similar movement in English literature, which began considerably earlier, is called Augustan literature. This, which had been dominant for several decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar. In music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and "Neoclassicism" is used of 20th-century developments. However, the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck represented a specifically Neoclassical approach, spelt out in his preface to the published score of Alceste (1769), which aimed to reform opera by removing ornamentation, increasing the role of the chorus in line with Greek tragedy, and using simpler unadorned melodic lines.

The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as "the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as being revived varying considerably. Ancient models were certainly very much involved, but the style could also be regarded as a revival of the Renaissance, and especially in France as a return to the more austere and noble Baroque of the age of Louis XIV, for which a considerable nostalgia had developed as France's dominant military and political position started a serious decline. Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, to the disapproval of critics.

Neoclassicism was strongest in architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts, where classical models in the same medium were relatively numerous and accessible; examples from ancient painting that demonstrated the qualities that Winckelmann's writing found in sculpture were and are lacking. Winckelmann was involved in the dissemination of knowledge of the first large Roman paintings to be discovered, at Pompeii and Herculaneum and, like most contemporaries except for Gavin Hamilton, was unimpressed by them, citing Pliny the Younger's comments on the decline of painting in his period.

As for painting, Greek painting was utterly lost: Neoclassicist painters imaginatively revived it, partly through bas-relief friezes, mosaics and pottery painting, and partly through the examples of painting and decoration of the High Renaissance of Raphael's generation, frescos in Nero's Domus Aurea, Pompeii and Herculaneum, and through renewed admiration of Nicolas Poussin. Much "Neoclassical" painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the relative merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann and his fellow Hellenists generally being on the winning side.

Characteristics

Neoclassical literature was defined by common sense, order, accuracy, and structure. In the literature of the renaissance period, man was portrayed to be good; however, this genre of writers showed man to be flawed and relatively more human. Their characters also practiced conservatism, self-control, and restraint. Neoclassical authors saw the world under a new light. Unlike the previous two eras, the writers of this era gave more importance to social needs as compared to individual needs. They believed that man can find meaning in society, religion, natural order, government, and literature. In no time, the winds of a new revolution swept through Europe and North America, and changed everything from art and literature to society and fashion, on its way. Though the neoclassical era later transitioned into the romantic era, it left behind a prominent footprint which can be seen in the literary works of today.

A large number of literary works came out during this period, which included parody, fables, melodrama, rhyming with couplets, satire, letters, diaries, novels, and essays. More emphasis was given to grammar and etymology (study of words).

Stages

For the sake of convenience, experts have divided this era into three sections: Restoration period, Augustan era, and Age of Johnson.

The Restoration Period (1660-1700)

After the beheading of King Charles I, the monarchy was ‘restored’, and so this period got the name ‘restoration’.This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne after a long period of Puritan domination in England. Its symptoms include the dominance of French and Classical influences on poetry and drama. Sample writers include John Dryden, John Locke, Sir William Temple, and Samuel Pepys, and Aphra Behn in England. Abroad, representative authors include Jean Racine and Molière.

A new era had dawned with epic works such as Paradise Lost and Areopagitica by Milton and Sodom by Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. It also saw a new age of both sexual comedy and wisdom, with works such as The Country Wife and The Pilgrim’s Progress respectively. While writers like Richard Blackmore wrote King Arthur, it also saw critics like Jeremy Collier, John Dryden, and John Dennis who gave a new direction to understand literature and theater.

Poetry too was revamped and saw the beginning of rhyme schemes. The iambic pentameter was one of the popular forms of poetry, preferred by the poets and the listeners. Odes and pastorals became the new means for exchanging ideas.

The poems were mostly realistic and satirical, in which, John Dryden reigned supreme. He further divided poetry into three heads, that of fables, political satire, and doctrinal poems. You will not find any spiritual bias, moral highness, or philosophy in these poems, which became the signature style of the Restoration Era.

Augustan Age (1700-1745)

II. The Augustan Age

The Augustan Age took its name from the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose monarchy brought stability in the social and political environment. It is during his reign, that epic writers such as Ovid, Horace, Virgil, etc., flourished.

This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and Horace's literature in English letters. The principal English writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander Pope. Abroad, Voltaire was the dominant French writer.

 Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireIII. The Age of Johnson . Writers such as Pope, Dryden, Daniel Defoe, Swift, and Addison were the major contributors to this era. Dryden’s attempts at satiric verse were highly admired by many generations. This era was also called the Age of Pope due to his noteworthy contributions.

This period marks the transition toward the upcoming Romanticism though the period is still largely Neoclassical. Major writers include Dr. Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies, while writers like Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal. In America, this period is called the Colonial Period. It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

Age of Johnson (1745-1785)

This era made its way into the literary world by stepping out of the shadows of its previous age. Shakespearean literature found appreciation during this era. It brought forth the Gothic school of literature. Qualities like balance, reason, and intellect were the main focus of this era. Hence, this age is also called the Age of Sensibility.

Important works such as Burke’s, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, Johnson’s, The Rambler, and Goldsmith’s, The Vicar of Wakefield are still read.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) gave a massive literary contribution, which till date is a great boon to one an all. And that is the Dictionary of the English Language, which was first published in the year 1755. Though many similar books were used prior to this book, the dictionary in particular was the one that was most popularly used and admired, right until the printing of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.

Some Neoclassical Writers and their Works

John Milton (1608 – 1674), Paradise Lost

John Dryden (1631 – 1700), To My Lord Chancellor and Marriage a la Mode

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744), Translation of the Iliad, Pastorals and An Essay on Criticism

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745), Gulliver’s Travels

Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731), Robinson Crusoe

Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), A Dictionary of the English Language

REPRESENTATIVE WRITERS OF THE NEO-CLASSICAL AGE [1700-1798]

ALEXANDER POPE and SAMUEL JOHNSON are regarded as the representative

writers of the Neo-Classical Age

ALEXANDER POPE [1688-1744]

Representative writer of the Age

English poet, critic and satirist

Was born in Lombard Street, London in 1688

Catholic parents: Alexander Pope Senior and Turner Pope

During the period, Public education was banned to Catholics and therefore Pope was educated at

home, learnt Greek and Latin under a tutelage of a priest. Later, at Catholic school.

Pope undertook a rigorous self- education.

He suffered a physical deformity-he was only 4 feet 6 inches tall with curvature of the spine.

He composed his ‘Pastorals’ and was published in the 6th part of Tonson’s Poetical

Miscellanies.

His didactic poem, ‘An Essay on Criticism’ was published in May 1711. This poem established

his literary reputation.

His famous mock-heroic epic ‘The Rape of the Lock’ [Belinda’s Toilet is a part of this poem] was first published in 1712. It was based on a family quarrel between the Petres and Fermors.

In 1713, Pope along with Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Parnell founded a literary club called the Scriblerus Club to satirize All the false tastes in learning .

Pope’s famous works:

An Essay on Criticism [A didactic poem]

The Rape of the Lock

1. An Essay on Criticism [Poem]

This is a didactic poem in heroic couplets.

It was published in 1711.

It contains a thumbnail history of criticism from Aristotle to William

It is said, he wrote this as a response to an ongoing critical debate, which centered on the question of whether poetry should be natural or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.

This poem contains three sections that deals with:

1. The need of studying the principles of tastes and improving out judgments by studying

the ancients and holding them in high esteem.

2. Causes that hinder correct judgement.

3. Functions of a critic.

Pope states that an ideal critic needs to possess taste, judgement and learning.

2. The Rape of the Lock

This is a mock heroic epic.

This was published with two cantos in 1712 and later expanded into five cantos in 1714.

It was dedicated to John Caryll.

It was based on Lord Petre’s cutting of a lock of hair of Arabella Fermor.

In the poem, Belinda is Arabella Fermor and Baron is for Lord Robert Petre.

Pope intended not to mock [make fun of or criticize] the form itself but to mock his society in its failure to rise to epic standards.It exposed the pettiness of the society by casting trivial [silly, insignificant] events and issues

against the grandeur of the traditional epic subjects and also the lead characters against the bravery of epic heroes. This poem is a reflection of artificial and hollow life of 18th century society.

Pope’s other works

Pastorals : were among his first published poems. It offered an idealized view of country life modeled on Vergil’s pastorals.

Messiah : Poem which deals with Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, which was said to predict the birth of Christ.

Windsor Forest : This is Pope’s first political poem.

It celebrated the rule of Queen Anne and the Peace Treaty of Utrecht.

Windsor Forest was a famous royal hunting ground. Here it functions as a metaphor for political life of the nation.This poem was dedicated to George Granville, the Secretary of war in Queen Anne’s government.

Peri Bathous : An essay which is a parody on Longinus’ “ On the Sublime”.

It ridicules the contemporary poets.

The Dunciad : Poem that celebrates the Goddess Dullness and the progress of her agents across Britain.

An Essay on Man : Philosophical essay written in heroic couplets that is concerned with vindicating ways of god to man. Pope’s arguments in the Essay derive in part from Bolingbroke’fragmentary philosophical writings. It comprises four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke.

These are : 1) Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to the Universe 2) Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to Happiness.

Epistle to a Lady: Verse letter written in heroic couplets, which is addressed to Martha Blount. It is a Horation Epistle in form. Pope is critical of women, who live a public aristocratic life, while he celebrates Martha, a woman who shines in the private life.

An Epistle to Burlington : Addressed to the architect Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. It concerns Itself with true and false taste in architecture and landscape gardening in 18th century England. It attacks Timon villa as a model of bad taste.

Epistle to Lord Bathurst : Addressed to Allen, Lord Bathurst. Examines the use of riches.

Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot : Poetic epistle addressed to the writer and physician John Arbuthnot. Defines nature of right action as opposed to wrong. Also contains satirical portraits of Joseph Addison under the name Atticus and Lord Hervey under the character Sporus

DR SAMUEL JOHNSON [1709 -1784]

English poet, biographer, critic and lexicographer Representative writer of the Age along with Alexander Pope .

Was born in the country town of Lichfield in Staffordshire in 1709

Parents: Sarah and Michael Johnson

Was plagued by physical difficulties- blind in one eye and near sighted in the other, deaf in one ear and scarred on face and neck from the disease scrofula [a tubercular infection of the lymph glands]

Died in1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey

 WORKS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON

 Essays, Pamphlets, Periodicals, Sermons

 Birmingham Journal (1732-33)

 The Rambler (1750-52)

 The Adventure(1753-54)

 The Idler (1758-1760)

 The False Alarm (1770)

 Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’ Islands (1771)

 The Patriot (1774)

 A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

Poetry

 Messiah, a translation into Latin of Alexander Pope’ Messiah (1728)

 London (1738)

 Prologue at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane (1747)

 The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

 Irene, a Tragedy (1749)

Biographies, Criticism

 Life of Mr. Richard Savage (1744)

 Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745)

 Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare (1765)

 The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765)

 Lives of the Poets (1779-81)

Dictionary

• A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Novellas

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)

Famous Works of Johnson:

1. London [Poem]

2. Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare [Literary Criticism ]

3. Lives of the Poets [Short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets]

4. A Dictionary of the English Language [Dictionary]

London

• Written in heroic couplets, Johnson’s poem ‘London’ was published in (1738)

• The full title of the poem is London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.

• A literary imitation of Juvenal’s Satire 3, the poem is neither a translation nor a paraphrase of the original work

• Johnson transforms Juvenal’s cultural satire into a political one with its focus on the corruption in the court of King George 2

• It is a satire which addresses the condition of 18th century England, marked by various changes on the personal and public front.

• Johnson utilizes the figure of Thales to develop his socio-political critique of the metropolitan space, represented by London. The poem begins with Thales leaving London for the countryside

Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare

• Published in 1765, Johnson’s Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare is considered as a classic document of English literary criticism.

• According to Johnson, a great work of art is that which subsists through a long time and remains a classic despite variations of taste and change of manners. Shakespeare’s works are such works, which have passed down from generation to generation.

• Johnson describes Shakespeare as the ‘poet of nature’ one who ‘Holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life’.

• Shakespeare’s drama is peopled with characters that are not exaggerated, but men who speak and act as readers do . Johnson then goes on to describe the intermingling of comedy and tragedy in Shakespeare’s plays. His plays are neither tragedies nor comedies, but compositions of a different kind; exhibiting the real state of nature, which consists of both good and evil, joy and sorrow.

• After listing Shakespeare’s positive points and merits as a playwright, Johnson critically examines his faults.

• Shakespeare’s faults as a playwright are

(1) He sacrifices virtue to convenience and writes without any moral purpose

(2) His plots are loosely constructed (3) He pays no attention to unities of time or place

(4) He is imperfect in comic scenes, which becomes usually gross [exuberantly].

(5) His diction [choice and use of words] is pompous [ªÉʨsÀªÀ, §qÁ¬ÄAiÀÄ ] and his catastrophe [zÀÄgÀAvÀ] is imperfectly produced.

(6) His fondness for quibbles [zÀéAzÁévÀðzÀ, PÉÆAPÀÄ£ÀÄr].

Arthur Sherbo calls Johnson’s preface as ‘His greatest single critical pronouncement and ‘ a landmark in Shakespearean criticism.

Lives of the Poets

Consists of Short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets.The poets described mostly belong to the 17th and 18^th centuries. Poets’ biographies are divided into three distinct parts: 1]A narrative of the poet’s life

2] A presentation of his character 3] A critical assessment of his main poems

A Dictionary of the English Language

One of the greatest achievements of scholarship.

It was first published in 1755.

It took around nine years to complete it.

It contained 40000 words.

It included a history of the language, a grammar and an extensive list of words representing basic general vocabulary.

The poets in the neoclassical age in English literature .

Key poets associated with the school of neoclassical poetry included John Milton, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Oliver Goldsmith. Major works included epics and satires, such as Pope's The Rape of the Lock or Milton's Paradise Lost.

The major writers of Neoclassicism

This lesson listed some of the most famous Neoclassical writers, who included John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Johnson.