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15.
The Age of Transition
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16.
The Romantic Age
The Age of Transition
Outline to the Age of Transition
1. The Poetry of Sentiment
James Thomson,
William Collins, Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith,
William Shenstone, Charles Churchill
2. The Novel of Sentiment
Samuel Richardson,
Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne
3. The Realistic Novel
Henry Fielding
4. The Revival of Comedy in Theatre
R. B. Sheridan
5. Historians
David Hume,
William Robertson, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon
6. Prose Writers
Edmund Burke,
Adam Smith, William Paley, The Earl of Chesterfield, William Godwin, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, James Macpherson, Thomas Percy, Thomas Chatterton
7. Other Novelists
Tobias
Smollet
8. The Novel of Terror & The Pre-Romantic
Novel
Horace Walpole,
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Frances Burney, Jane Austen
9. Pre-Romantic Poetry
William Cowper,
Robert Burns & William Blake
The Age of Transition
The eighteenth
century is marked by the progressive advent of a new inspiration. Just as the
invasion of sentimentalism transforms the moral life, so the literature is
transformed by the gradual appearance of themes based on sentiment, which come
to take their place besides classical motives.
The Poetry of Sentiment
James Thomson: His Winter was afterward
quadrupled in size by including the other three seasons, and became The
Seasons (1730). It is a blank-verse poem, and consists of a long
series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes, mainly those with
which he was familiar during his youth on the Scottish Border. There is a great
deal of padding, and the style is often marked by clumsy expressions; yet on
the whole the treatment is exhilarating, full of concentrated observation and
joy in the face of nature. Above all, it is real nature, obtained from the
living sky and air, and not from books; and, coming when it did, the poem
exerted a strong counter-influence against the artificial school of poetry.
Thomson also wrote Liberty, a gigantic poem in blank verse, intolerably dull. It had
no success. As Johnson says, "The praises of Liberty were condemned to harbor
spiders, and to gather dust." In the last year of his life he published The
Castle of Indolence, which is even more remarkable than The
Seasons. The poem is written in Spenserian stanzas, and in the true Spenserian
fashion it gives a description of a lotus-land into which world-weary souls are
invited to withdraw. The work is imitative, and so cannot claim to be of the
highest class, but it is an imitation of the rarest merit. For languid suggestiveness,
in dulcet and harmonious versification, and for subtly woven vowel music it
need not shirk comparison with the best of Spenser himself. Yet the likeness is
confined to similarity of tone and technique; Thomson's sentiments are too commonplace
to merit comparison with the more profound thought and philosophy which
underlie Spenser's work.
Thomson also wrote some dramas,
including one bad tragedy,
Sophonisba (1729); and in
collaboration with Mallet he produced the masque Alfred (1740),
which happens to contain the song Ride,
Britannia.
William Collins: His Persian Eclogues (1742) are in
the conventional style of Pope, and though they profess to deal with Persian
scenes and characters the Oriental" setting shows no special information
or inspiration. The book that gives him his place in literature is his Odes (1746),
a small octavo volume of fifty-two pages. The work is a collection of odes to Pity, Fear, Simplicity, and kindred abstract subjects? Some of the
odes are over-weighted with the cumbrous, creaking machinery of the Pindaric;
but the best of them, especially the Ode
to Evening (done in unrhymed verse), are instinct
with a sweet tenderness, a subdued and shadowy pathos, and a magical enchantment
of phrase. In the same book two short elegies, one beginning "How sleep
the brave" and the other on James Thomson ("In yonder grave a Druid
lies"), are captivating with their misty lights and murmuring echoes of
melancholy.' In the finest work of Collins, with his eager and wistful
searching, with what Johnson morosely called his "flights of imagination
which pass the bounds of nature," we are ushered over the threshold of
romance.
Thomas Gray: His first poem was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
College (1747), which contained gloomy moralizings on the
approaching fate of those "little victims," the schoolboys. Then,
after years of revision and excision, appeared the famous Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751). This poem was smooth and graceful; it contained
familiar sentiments turned into admirable, quotable phrases; and so, while it
was agreeably familiar, it was fresh enough to be attractive. Its popularity
has been maintained to the present day. His Pindaric
Odes (1757) were unsuccessful, being
criticized for their obscurity. The
Bard and The
Progress of Poesy, the two Pindaric odes in the book,
certainly require some elucidation, especially to readers not familiar with
history and literature.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH: (1728-74)
As another typical example of the
transition poet we
take Goldsmith. Much of Goldsmith's early life is
obscure, and our knowledge of it rests upon his own unsupported and hardly
reliable evidence. He was probably bom at Pallas, a small village in County
Longford, in Ireland, and he was the son of the poor but admirable curate of
the village. His father, the village, and various local features are duly
registered, and unduly idealized, in the poem The Deserted Village.
Though his poetical production is not
large, it is notable. His first poem, The Traveller (1764), deals
with his wanderings through Europe. The poem, about four hundred lines in
length, is written in the heroic couplet, and is a series of descriptions and
criticisms of the places and peoples of which he had experience. His only other
poem of any length is The Deserted Village (1770). In this
poem, as he deals with the memories of his youth, the pathetic note is more
freely expressed. His natural descriptions have charm and genuine feeling; but
his remedies for the agricultural depression of Ireland are innocently empty of
the slightest practical value.
His Drama. Goldsmith wrote two prose comedies, both of which rank
high among their class. The first, called The Good-natur'd Man (1768), is not
so good as the second, She Stoops to Conquer (1773).
The prose is of astonishing range and
volume. Among his works of fiction we find The Citizen of the World (1759), a series
of imaginary letters from a Chinaman, whose comments on English society are
both simple and shrewd. This series was contributed to The
Public Ledger, a popular magazine. He wrote many 'other essays in the
manner of Addison, almost as well done as those. of Addison. His other
important work of fiction is his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), which is
in the first rank of the eighteenth-century novels. The plot of the novel is
simple, though sometimes inconsistent, the characters are human and attractive,
and the book has all the Goldsmith qualities of humour and pathos.
William Shenstone: (1714-63) His published works consist chiefly of odes, elegies, and
what he called Levities, or Pieces of Humour (often dreary
enough), and The Schoolmistress (1742). His
poems are largely pastoral, but they are by no means the artificial pastoral of
Pope. He studies nature himself, and does not derive his notions from books. In
this matter he. Resembles Cowper. The Schoolmistress, which
by a notable advance is written in the Spenserian stanza, deals in rather a
sentimental fashion with the teacher in his first school; it is sympathetic in
treatment, and in style is an interesting example of the transition.
Charles Churchill: (1731-64). Churchill lives in literature as a satirist of trenchant
force and sustained vigour. Though his work lacks constructional skill, his use
of both the octosyllabic and decasyllabic couplet has a greater freedom and
strength than were common in his day. He has something of the energy and verve
of Dryden, his acknowledged master. His wit is amusing, and his satirical
portraits are firmly, if not memorably, drawn. The work which established his
reputation was The Rosciad
(1761), a slashing attack on the
leading figures of the contemporary stage, and it was followed by a series of
political satires, of which the best is The Prophecy of Famine (1763), where he
attacked the Scots, a race for whom he had an intense dislike.
The Novel of Sentiment
SAMUEL RICHARDSON: He is considered the originator of the
modern English novel and has also been called the first dramatic novelist as
well as the first of the eighteenth century ‘‘sentimental’’ writers. He
introduced tragedy to the novel form and substituted social embarrassment for
tragic conflict, thus developing the first novel of manners.
At the
age of fifty-one, Richardson began writing what would become his first novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). This work was the result of a commission he undertook at
the request of two booksellers, Charles Rivington and John Osborn. Both
Rivington and Osborn felt that a collection of model letters to be used by
people with little formal education would be a prosperous venture, and they proposed
the idea to Richardson, who enthusiastically accepted. Two years later the
volume was published. While he was writing this work, Richardson elaborated on
a story he had heard about the attempted seduction of a young servant girl by
her aristocratic master. She held her ground, and the master was so impressed
with her virtue that he fell in love with her and proposed an honest marriage.
The result was Pamela, and Richardson began his career as a
novelist. Pamela
was a huge success and became the
best-selling novel in Britain and created a sensation throughout Europe.
Another
Epistolary Novel, Another Tragic Heroine: Richardson extended the novel with a sequel volume in 1741 but fell
ill again in 1742. Few outside his close circle of friends knew that he was
writing a new novel that would dwarf Pamela in
size, popularity, and literary influence. Richardson tested some of his ideas
in a remarkable series of letters with his friends, many of them women, but he
remained stubborn about the controversial tragic plan of his masterwork. The
first volumes of Clarissa appeared in 1747, the last ones in 1748, and substantially
different second and third editions were complete by 1751.
A
Virtuous Male Hero: Richardson
began his third novel, The
History of Sir Charles Grandison, around 1750. The story is about how a good man, in love with two
deserving women, balances questions of loyalty and honor. Richardson also
addresses several social issues of the time relating to changing concepts of
male virtue, including the ethics of dueling and the nature of masculine sentimentality.
While also popular in the period—Jane Austen said it was her favorite
novel—literary history has not valued Sir Charles Grandison as much as Pamela
or Clarissa,
mainly because of its lack of a compelling dramatic situation and
psychologically complex characters.
Richardson
builds upon the existing genre of the romance—love stories often featuring
forced marriages, abductions, and sometimes rape. But in Clarissa especially, Richardson replaces the
idealism of the romance with both the realism of interpersonal relationships
and near-perfect Christian virtue. Clarissa and Lovelace are among the very
first modern fictional characters with a full capacity for change and
self-analysis. Clarissa and Pamela are among the first characters in English
fiction who develop slowly, rather than changing suddenly due to an altering
experience.
The
Longest Novel in English: Clarissa is the longest novel in English—a fact loved by some readers, tolerated
by most, and mocked by others. Like the works of James Joyce and Marcel Proust,
Clarissa is meant for those who like reading, and it
also is a work that demands rereading.
Class
Struggles: The
plots of Richardson’s novels demonstrate the engagement of literature and
culture in the middle of the eighteenth century. Richardson is unique among the
many early novelists who build their romance plots around themes of class
struggle. The struggle of gender stereotypes in Pamela and Clarissa serve as a
parallel to the class struggles of the middle class asserting its emerging
powers against the manipulations of the old aristocratic order. Pamela, a
servant girl, converts the decadent Mr. B. to her more Puritanical strain of
working-class virtue. Clarissa exhibits the new conflict between the
middleclass gentry, rising by colonial trade and coal mining, and the old
nobility. While Lovelace represents the worst abuses of aristocratic power, the
Harlowe family represents the vulgarity and selfish materialism of the rising middle
class. Only the hero and the heroine transcend the limitations of their class
and time.
By the early
twentieth century, he was largely neglected, but in 1957, Ian Watt’s influential
book The Rise of the
Novel helped restore the reputation of
Richardson’s novels with an enthusiastic appreciation of their realism and
form.
It
should be noted that Richardson’s reception history is bound up in a tight knot
with Henry Fielding’s. Fielding wrote a parody of Pamela called
Shamela, mocking what he saw as the heroine’s
moral hypocrisy. Fielding’s much more ambitious novel Joseph Andrews also begins as a parody of Pamela, and the title character is supposedly her brother. While
Fielding did have some kind things to say about Clarissa,
and Richardson helped to finance a trip to Lisbon that Fielding took for his
health, the two spent most of their writing careers in a bitter public rivalry.
Clarissa earned immediate and lasting respect throughout Europe,
sometimes bringing readers such as Denis Diderot to say in a eulogy for
Richardson,
‘‘O
Richardson! . . .Who is it who will dare to wrest away one line from your
sublime works? . . . Centuries, make haste to run and bring with you the honors
which are due to Richardson!’’
Clarissa was popular in England, but it was remarkably so in France and
Germany, where many imitations and influenced novels were produced well into
the nineteenth century, including Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons.
Note: Epistolary novels have a unique relationship with their
readers. Without a narrator, characters speak for themselves, often describing
events as they are occurring, and the reader is left to decide which of the
competing viewpoints is best. Other works that use the epistolary method
include:
The
Color Purple
(1983), a novel by Alice Walker. This work
implements a modern take on the epistolary novel. Set in 1930s Georgia, Walker
addresses the challenges, injustices, and triumphs that African American women faced
in pre–civil rights America.
Les
Liaisons danger
uses (Dangerous Liaisons)
(1782), a novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Directly influenced by Clarissa, Laclos created a novel of letters between the vain libertine
Valmont and his partner/competitor, the Marquise de Mereuil, as they plot the
sexual conquest and humiliation of several prominent and innocent young women.
Dracula (1897), a novel by Bram Stoker. This Gothic vampire story uses
journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, a ship’s log, and phonograph
recordings to advance the narrative. Epistolary novels have a unique
relationship with their readers.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH: [Extended Analysis] The Value of Sentimental Comedy: In the eighteenth century, English
literature had turned increasingly toward sentimentalism as a reaction against
what was perceived to be the immorality of Restoration-period literature.
MAJOR
WORKS
The
Citizen of the World (1762)
The
Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
The
Good-Natur’d Man (1768)
The
Deserted Village (1770)
She
Stoops to Conquer (1771)
Enduring
Popularity of The Vicar of Wakefield: Unable to reconcile their varied interpretations of The Vicar of Wakefield, readers have been interested in the work
for more than two hundred years, and it has become a standard text in the study
of the English novel. Similarly,
although literary commentators continue to debate Goldsmith’s intent in writing
She Stoops to
Conquer; or The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy, audiences unconcerned with possible
shades of authorial intent continue to enjoy the play as an entertaining
theatrical comedy.
Goldsmith’s
works relied on a comic spirit to satirize human folly. Here are some other
works with a similar approach:
The
Misanthrope
(1666), a play by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (a.k.a.
Moliere). This play points out the flaws all humans possess while directly
satirizing the hypocrisies of the French aristocracy.
Anti-Matrimony (1910), a play by Percy MacKaye Wycherley. This play satirizes
some of the moral folly and intellectual pretensions of the early twentieth
century.
27
Heaven (2007), a play by Ian Halperin and author
Todd Shapiro. This play is a rock musical that satirizes contemporary popular
culture by depicting conversations among four rock icons who died at age 27.
LAURENCE STERNE: Laurence Sterne’s enduring reputation as an
author rests upon two works, The
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760–1767) and A
Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), both of which were written and published during the last
nine years of his life. During that time he was the recipient of excessive praise
and the target of scathing criticism, heralded as a second François Rabelais,
Miguel de Cervantes, or Jonathan Swift, but also condemned as an immoral
hypocrite.
Literary
Celebrity Sterne
was forty-six when the initial volumes of Tristram Shandy were
published, and his fictional alter-ego Tristram vowed to produce two additional
volumes each year for the remainder of his life. Although the novel received
mixed reviews, readers of the time elevated both the book and its author to a phenomenal
status of celebrity. A short while after the publication of Tristram Shandy, Sterne happened to be in London and found
himself the center of a following that included aristocrats, members of
fashionable society, and leading figures in the arts.
The
Black Sheep of Eighteenth Century Literature: Tristram Shandy is
an unusual work by the literary standards of any period, but it particularly
stands out in the century that saw the birth and early development of the
realistic novel. While such novels as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones display their authors’ attempts to make prose fiction a means
for depicting contemporary life, Sterne demonstrates in Tristram Shandy aspirations of an entirely different kind. His characters,
although profoundly human, are also profoundly odd and do not have the
significant connections with their society held by characters in the great
realistic novels of the time; his style is one of cultivated spontaneity and
unpredictability, a series of digressions as opposed to the progressive
movement of events common in the works of Sterne’s contemporaries; and,
perhaps most conspicuously, his narrator is concerned with relating his ‘‘Life
and Opinions’’ rather than the more usual ‘‘Life and Adventures’’ of the
eighteenth-century bildungsroman (coming-of-age tale), making the novel largely
a plotless discourse on an encyclopedic array of subjects. Sterne’s other major
work, A Sentimental
Journey, is a
nonfiction memoir that conveys much the same sensibility as the fictional Tristram Shandy. An account of Sterne’s travels in France
and Italy, this memoir has as its central concern the subjective side of the
author’s experiences rather than the objective rendering of people and places,
which is the more usual concern of the travel writer.
Note: The bildungsroman traces the growth and development of a single
character, often from youth to old age. Tristram Shandy is
just one classic bildungsroman story; here are some others.
Pamela (1740), a novel by Samuel Richardson. The first epistolary
novel—that is, a novel told through a series of letters—this tale follows a
young maid who resists her master’s advances until he agrees to marry her. The success
of the book led to many more such epistolary tales throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Tom
Jones (1749), by Henry Fielding. After writing
two parodies of Pamela, Fielding tried his hand at novelwriting (at
the time a new form of storytelling); the resulting tale, which follows a boy
in his growth to a successful young man, stands as one of the classics of eighteenth-century
literature.
The
Catcher in the Rye
(1951), a novel by J. D. Salinger. This
controversial tale of teenage discontent is an account by Holden Caulfield of
life following his expulsion from a prep school at the age of sixteen.
Into
the Wild (1996), a nonfiction work by Jon Krakauer. This
book is an ultimately tragic account of a freespirited, nature-loving young man
who leaves his life and family behind in search of his own identity.
Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001),
a film by Chris Columbus. Based on the first book of the bestselling Harry
Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling, this introductory tale follows young
Harry as he begins his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The Realistic Novel
HENRY FIELDING: The English novel as we recognize it today
was shaped in large part by Henry Fielding’s three major novels. But if he had
never written a novel, Fielding would have a place in literary history as being
for a time one of England’s most popular comic playwrights. And if he had never
written a play, Fielding would have a place in political history as an
influential journalist and essayist. And if he had never written anything at
all, Fielding would still have a place in British history as a reforming judge
and the originator of London’s first effective police force. It has often been
said that if one could choose only one book from which to learn about England during
the eighteenth century, that book should be Fielding’s novel—often regarded as
the first novel in English letters—Tom
Jones.
Fielding’s
first play, Love in Several
Masques,
premiered in 1728, and for the next seven years Fielding was active as a playwright
and theater manager. He specialized in comedies, farces, and satires, the best
of which is probably Tom
Thumb (1730). Two political satires, Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737), so infuriated the government of the powerful Prime
Minister Robert Walpole that all London theaters, except two protected by royal
patent, were ordered closed by the Licensing Act of 1737. Fielding’s career as
a playwright was over, along with the theatrical careers of many others. Fielding
then turned to the study of the law. He continued to oppose the Walpole
government by editing a political journal, The Champion (1739–1740),
the first of four journals for which he wrote over his lifetime.
The
Dialectical Development of the Novel: Against Richardson In 1740, the morally earnest novelist
Samuel Richardson published Pamela;
or, Virtue Rewarded,
the story of a servant girl who preserves her virtue against the sexual
advances of her aristocratic employer, who later proposes a proper marriage to
her. The book was an immediate success. Fielding thought the work was the very
essence of moral hypocrisy, and he could not resist spoofing this in an
unsigned novella, An
Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741). Recent critics have noted with chagrin that the success of
fiction like Fielding’s and Richardson’s was achieved at precisely the moment
of the Great Irish Famine of 1740–41. A critical consensus is emerging that the
success of this new art form was related to English readers’ need to distance
themselves from the suffering of their neighbors in Ireland, which was at the
time an English colony. While 10 percent of the Irish population was starving
to death, the new novels were offering moral instruction and convulsive
laughter to an ever more appreciative London readership.
Continuing
the attack on Richardson, Fielding wrote a bogus sequel to Pamela, giving the heroine a younger brother who
likewise resists the sexual advances of his aristocratic lady employer. The History of the Adventures of
Joseph Andrews
(1742) begins with the extended joke of the
sexual double standard—female virginity being valued so much more than male
chastity—but it soon outgrows its satiric origins and becomes a fully developed
novel in its own right. Fielding’s preface is a manifesto for the developing
genre of the novel.
Fielding’s
law practice was not prospering, and the moderate income from Joseph Andrews was not sufficient to provide for his wife
and children. Consequently he gathered for publication as Miscellanies (three volumes, 1743) some earlier works,
including The History of
the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great, a savagely ironic account of a notorious
London thief whom he equated with all ‘‘great men,’’ Robert Walpole in particular.
The death
of his beloved wife, Charlotte, was such a shock to Fielding that his friends
feared for his sanity. Yet, during these years, Fielding was creating one of
the world’s enduring masterpieces of good humor and convivial optimism, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749).
Fielding’s
experiences as judge gave a more serious tone to his last novel, Amelia (1752). The sufferings of the heroine and her irresponsible
husband are used to expose flaws in the civil and military institutions of the period.
Sick with jaundice, dropsy, and gout, and worn out by overwork, Fielding
resigned his post as magistrate and sailed to Lisbon, Portugal, to recuperate.
He made his journey the subject of his last work, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, which was published posthumously (1755). Fielding died in
Lisbon on October 8, 1754.
Journals:
The early eighteenth century was a great
age for journalism and essay writing. Increasing literacy rates, an
unquenchable thirst for novelty, and a constantly contentious political climate
resulted in dozens of journals and newspapers appearing seemingly overnight.
Fielding produced three journals in his lifetime in the model of the Tatler and the Spectator,
the influential journals of cultural commentary published by Joseph Addison and
Richard Steele. Fielding’s journals featured more politics, however, like the
journals of Daniel Defoe.
The
Rise of the Novel: Many
critics consider Tom
Jones to be the first novel in English. Novels
are long fictional stories that feature ordinary people—sometimes in everyday situations
and sometimes in extraordinary circumstances.
The
novel emerged as a popular literary genre in the eighteenth century as literacy
rates rose, printing costs dropped, and the middle class swelled. A new
population of readers emerged, and these people appreciated fiction with which
they could identify.
Reimagining
the Picaresque: For his
novels, Fielding drew heavily upon the inspiration and structure of Spanish author
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don
Quixote (1605). In Joseph Andrews, Fielding recasts the brave, idealistic, but absentminded hero
of Don Quixote into the figure of Parson Adams. In Tom Jones, Fielding borrows the now familiar formula of the
hero-with-bumbling-sidekick from Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza, recasting
them as the heroic Tom and the naive country bumpkin Benjamin Partridge.
Fielding also borrows the on-the-road structure of episodic adventures from Don Quixote known in the Spanish literary tradition as the ‘‘picaresque.’’
In many of these episodes, Fielding draws upon his experience as a successful
comic dramatist to create scenes remarkable for their comic timing, sharply
drawn characterizations, and complex interweaving of plot and subplots.
Note: Fielding’s Jonathan
Wild, Joseph Andrews, and Tom
Jones are influenced by the ‘‘picaresque’’—a
Spanish genre about the adventures of a trickster or rogue hero, traveling from
place to place, getting into trouble with authority figures, and escaping by
use of his cleverness and charm. Below are some works about tricksters, as well
as about clashes between urban or industrial and rural or agricultural
lifetsyles.
Gulliver’s
Travels (1726), a novel by Jonathan Swift. Gulliver
is more gullible than roguish, but he travels to several remote islands
discovering little people, huge people, and talking horses. Gulliver gets
himself into trouble by maintaining his English ‘‘common sense’’ values in
places with very different assumptions and traditions—the vehicle for Swift’s
often bitter satire.
Firefly (2002), a television series created by Joss Whedon. In the
twenty-sixth century, a group of smugglers—led by a former sergeant from the
losing side of a galactic war—journey across the galaxy and find trouble
wherever they go, but always manage to stay one step ahead of the peacekeepers,
bounty hunters, and criminals trying to track them down.
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),
a novel by Mark Twain. In this picaresque novel about a trip on a raft down the
Mississippi River, Twain shows what is great and enduring about life in the
South, but Huck also encounters all the forces of racism, corruption, and greed
that mark a turn of the corner in Southern life on the eve of the Civil War.
The Revival of Comedy
in Theatre
R. B. SHERIDAN: Irish author Richard Brinsley Sheridan was
both a dramatist and a statesman. He is best known for his contribution to the
revival of the English Restoration comedy of manners, which depicts the amorous
intrigues of wealthy society. His most popular comedies, The Rivals (1775) and The
School for Scandal
(1777), display his talent for sparkling
dialogue and farce. Like other writers of the genre, Sheridan satirized
society, though his dramas reflect gentle morality and sentimentality.
First
Success as Playwright: Success
for Sheridan began with The
Rivals in 1775. Initially, the performance of the
play failed because of miscasting and the play’s excessive length. Undaunted by
the poor reception, Sheridan recast several roles, abbreviated sections of the
play, and reopened it ten days later to a unanimously positive response. The
success of The
Rivals derived
from the use of one of comedy’s oldest devices: the satirizing of manners. The
favorable reception of The
Rivals led
immediately to other opportunities for Sheridan. At Covent Garden on May 2,
1775, his two-act farce St.
Patrick’s Day; or, The Scheming Lieutenant appeared and earned for itself a minor place in the afterpiece
repertoire. The farce contains many of the elements of The Rivals: idiosyncratic but essentially
good-natured characters, scenes of disguise and of revelation, quick, verbal
strokes, and a farcical starring role rich in numerous assumed disguises for
the principal male actor.
In 1779,
Sheridan produced his last successful work, The Critic; or, Tragedy Rehearsed. His last play was Pizarro (1799). A historical drama, Pizarro met with popular acclaim but was soon forgotten. Critics today
consider it a disappointing conclusion to Sheridan’s theatrical career.
Note: Sheridan was adept at using the ‘‘reversal of fortune’’ plot
line to comic effect. Here are some other works that contain the reversal-of-fortune
plot, sometimes known as peripeteia:
Great
Expectations
(1860–1861), a novel by Charles Dickens.
Things change for the poor orphan Pip when he learns of a large fortune coming
his way.
The
Little Princess
(1905), a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
A young girl whose father has died in the jungle grows up in poverty, until one
day she realizes she is the lost heir to a vast fortune.
Reversal
of Fortune (1990), a film by Barbet Schroeder. In this
movie based on the true events surrounding husband and wife Claus and Sunny von
Bu¨ low, a large fortune is to be gained if a lawyer can wrangle the appeal.
Trading
Places (1983), a film directed by John Landis. In this
Academy Award–nominated comedy, two wealthy brothers make a bet on whether or
not a poor man will be affected by instant wealth.
Historians
DAVID HUME (1711-76). Born and educated at Edinburgh, Hume first distinguished himself
as a philosopher, publishing A
Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) and Essays, Moral and Political (1741 and 1742). Later he turned to historical work, writing
The History of England, in six volumes, which appeared between the years 1754 and
1761. At first the work was coldly received, for it traversed the popular Whig
notions, but in time the book raised Hume to the position of the leading
historian of the day. He died in the same year that witnessed the issue of the
first volume of The Decline and Fall. As a historian Hume makes no pretence at profound research,
so that his work has little permanent value as history.
William Robertson (1721-93). Robertson also was a Scot, being born in the county of
Midlothian. After leaving the university he entered the Scottish Church. He had
an active and successful career as a historian, producing among other works The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen
Mary and of James VI until his Accession to the Crown of England ( 759), The
History of Charles V (1769), and The History of America (1771).
JAMES BOSWELL (1740-95) was born in Edinburgh of a good Scottish family. He studied
law, but his chief delight was the pursuit of great men, whose acquaintance he greedily
cultivated.
He lives in literature by his supreme
effort, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), which ranks as one of the best biographies in
existence. Boswell sought and obtained Johnson's friendships endured any
humiliation for the sake of improving it; and for twenty-one years, by means of
an astonishing amount of patience, pertinacity, and sheer thick-skinned
imperviousness to slight and insult, obtained an intimate personal knowledge of
Johnson's life and habits. Boswell has suffered at the hands of Macaulay, who
has pictured him as being a knavish buffoon. No doubt he had glaring faults;
but on the other hand he had great native shrewdness, a vigorous memory, a
methodical and tireless industry which made him note down and preserve many
details of priceless value, and a natural genius for seizing upon points of
supreme literary importance. All these gifts combine to make his book a
masterpiece.
EDWARD GIBBON: (His
first projected book, A History of Switzerland (1770), was never finished. Then appeared the first volume
of The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire (1776). At nearly regular intervals of
two years each of the other five volumes was produced, the last appearing in
1788. His Autobiography, which contains valuable material concerning his life, is his
only other work of any importance] and it is written with all his usual
elegance and suave, ironic humour. (To most judges The Decline and Fall ranks as one of the greatest of historical works, and is a
worthy example of what a history ought to be. In time it covers more than a
thousand years, and in scope it includes all the nations of Europe.
Prose Writers
EDMUND BURKE (1729-97): The
considerable sum of Burke's achievement can for the sake of convenience be
divided into two groups: his purely philosophical writings, and his political
pamphlets and speeches.
(a) His philosophical writings, which comprise the smaller division
of his product, were composed in the earlier portion of his career. A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) is a parody of the style and ideas of Bolingbroke,
and, though it possesses much ingenuity, it has not much importance as an
original work. A Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756) is his most considerable attempt at philosophy. As
philosophy the book is only middling, for its theory and many of its examples
are questionable, but it has the sumptuous dressing of Burke's language and style.
(b) His political works are by far his most substantial claim to
fame. In variety, breadth of view, and illuminating power of vision they are
unsurpassed in the language. They fall, broadly, into two groups, the speeches
and the pamphlets. It is in the former that Burke's artistry and power are at
their best. The greatest of them, his speeches On American Taxation (1774) and on Conciliation
with the Colonies (1775), are passionate in their
pleading and conviction, rich in rhetorical effect, and brilliant in their marshalling
of material and in the statesmanlike insight which underlies their arguments.
Burke was always at his best when deeply moved, and the rights of the American
colonists gave him a subject worthy of his mettle. His speeches during the trial
of Warren Hastings (1788-94), though they lack the discerning judgment of his American
speeches, are also of a high level. He certainly does less than justice to the motives
of Hastings, but the speeches show all his usual power and elan. Of his best known
pamphlets, the first to be produced was Thoughts
on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770),
a resounding attack on the Tory Government then in power, which, though it
falls below his other pamphlets as political thinking, shows all his peculiar qualities
of style and method. Then, between 1790 and 1797, appeared a number of pamphlets,
of which Reflections on the Revolution in
France (1790), A Letter to a Noble Lord (1795), and Letters
on a Regicide Peace (1797) are the most noteworthy. All
three show some falling away from the level reached in his great speeches,
perhaps because, as pamphlets, they lacked the stimulus of an immediate
audience. Reflections on the Revolution in
France, a fierce challenge to the atheistical,
revolutionary ideas of the Jacobins, is a fine exposition of his own
principles, and, though it lacks something of the architectural skill of his
American speeches, it has many fine passages of moving eloquence. A Letter to a Noble Lord, in which Burke defends his right to receive a state pension,
is a masterpiece of irony, but Letters
on a Regicide Peace is marred by an almost hysterical
anger, which impairs much of the judgment and breadth of vision for which he is
so renowned.
ADAM SMITH (1723-90). This author was born at Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, and
completed his education at Glasgow and Oxford. In 1751 he was appointed
professor at Glasgow University. He issued his famous book The Wealth of Nations in 1776. In the history of economics the work is
epoch-making, for it lays the foundations of modern economic theory. In the
history of literature it is noteworthy because it is another example of that
spirit of research and inquiry that was abroad at this time, playing havoc with
literary convention as well as with many other ideas. The book is also a worthy
example of the use of a plain businesslike style in the development of theories
of far-reaching importance.
WILLIAM PALEY (1743-1805) may be taken as the typical theological writer of the age.
He was a brilliant Cambridge scholar, and obtained high offices in the Church,
finally becoming an archdeacon. His chief books are Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), Horoe
Paulina: (1790) and A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). His style is lively and attractive, and he possessed
much vigour of character and intellect.
The Earl of Chesterfield
(1694-1773) was of the famous Stanhope family. In
his day he was an illustrious wit and man of fashion, and held high political
offices. He is an example of the aristocratic amateur in literature, and he
wrote elegant articles for the fashionable journals, such as The World. His Letters to his Son, which were published in 1774, shortly after his death,
caused a great flutter. They appeared diabolically cynical and immoral, and as
such they were denounced by Johnson. No doubt they affect the tired cynicism of
the man of the world, but that does not prevent them from being keen.and
clever, and underneath their bored indifference to morality they reveal a
shrewd judgment of men and manners.
WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836) is a prominent example of the revolutionary man of letters
of the time. He was the son of a dissenting minister, and intended to follow
the same profession, but very soon drifted away from it. He then devoted
himself to the pursuit of letters, in which he developed his extreme views on
religion, politics, sociology, and other important themes. His Political Justice (1793)
was deeply tinged with revolutionary ideas, and had a great effect on many
young and ardent spirits of the age, including Shelley. His novel Caleb Williams (1794)
was a dressing of the same theories in the garb of fiction. Godwin is worth
notice because he reveals the spread of the revolutionary doctrines that were
so strongly opposed by Burke.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712–1778): Rousseau was a French Enlightenment philosopher who
influenced the French Revolution and the development of romanticism.
Note: Some of
the major influences on Marx’s thought include social thinkers of the
Enlightenment, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau; earlier political economists,
notably Smith and Ricardo; Hegel, from whom Marx borrowed his dialectical method;
Ludwig Feuerbach, who challenged the Christian assumptions in Hegel’s thought;
and the French socialist-anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who attacked the
concept of private property. Some scholars have detected the influence of
classical Greek thinkers such as Aristotle on Marx’s relentless rationality.
One more influence not to be ignored is that of Friedrich Engels, a notable
author himself, who had already written The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) before joining forces with Marx.
James Macpherson (1736-96). [Ossian]
This writer was born at Kingussie, in
the county of Inverness, and was educated for the Church. He never became a
regular ninister, for at the age of twenty he was producing bad poetry, and
soon after he definitely adopted a literary career. He travelled in the
Highlands of Scotland and abroad, settled in London (1766), and meddled in the
politics of the time. Then he entered Parliament, realized a handsome fortune,
and died in his native county. After producing some worthless verse in the
conventional fashion, in 1760 he issued something very different. It was called
Fragments of Ancient Poetry
collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse
language. The work received a large share of
attention, and a subscription was raised to allow him to travel in the
Highlands to glean further specimens of native poetry.
The fruits of this were seen in Fingal (1762)
and Temora (1763) Macpherson declared that the books were his
translations of the poems of an ancient Celtic bard called Ossian. Immediately
a violent dispute broke out, many people (including Johnson) alleging that the
books were the original compositions of Macpherson himself. The truth is that
he gave substance to a large mass of misty Gaelic tradition, and cast the stories
into his peculiar prose style. The controversy hardly matters to us here. What matters
is that the tales deal largely with the romantic adventures of a mythical hero called
Fingal. They include striking descriptions of wild nature, and they are cast in
a rhythmic and melodious prose that is meant to reproduce the original Gaelic
poetical measure. As an essay in the Romantic method these works are of very
high value.
Thomas Percy (1729-1811), was another ballad-writer who, in addition to collecting the Reliques (1765),
composed ballads of his own, such as The
Friar of Orders Grey.
Thomas Chatterton: Chatterton's Bristowe
Tragedie has much of the fire and sombreness of
the old ballads. The brevity and pathos of Chatterton's career have invested it
with a fame peculiar in our literature. He is held up as the martyr of genius,
sacrificed by the callousness of the public. His fate, however, was largely due
to his own vanity and recklessness, and his genius has perhaps been overrated.
In 1768, while still at Bristol, he issued a collection of poems which seemed
archaic in style and spelling. These, he said, he had found in an ancient chest
lodged in a church in Bristol; and he further stated that most of them had been
written by a monk of the fifteenth century, by name Thomas Rowley. The collection
received the name of The Rowley Poems, and includes several ballads, one of which is The Battle of Hastings, and some descriptive and lyrical pieces, such as the Song to AElla. A
slight knowledge of Middle English reveals that they are forgeries thinly
disguised with antique spelling and phraseology; but, especially after their author's
death, they gained much currency, and had some influence on their time. There is
much rubbish in the poems, but in detached passages there is real beauty, along
with a marvellous precocity of thought.
Robert Fergusson: Fergusson is chiefly
notable as the forerunner of Burns, who was generous in his praise of the
earlier poet. His best poems are short descriptive pieces dealing with Scottish
life, such as The King's Birthday in
Edinburgh, To the Tron-Kirk Bell, and The Farmer's Ingle. This last poem perhaps suggested Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night. Fergusson gives clear and accurate descriptions, and his use
of the vernacular Scots tongue is vigorous and natural, thus providing Burns
with a model for his best style.
Other Novelists
Tobias Smollett (1721-71). Smollett was a Scotsman, being born in Dumbartonshire. Though
he came of a good family, from an early age he had to work for a living. He was
apprenticed to a surgeon, and, becoming a surgeon's mate on board a man-of-war,
saw some fighting and much of the world. He thus stored up abundant raw
material for the novels that were to'follow. When he published The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) the book was so successful that he settled in London;
and the remainder of his life is mainly the chronicle of his works. Roderick Random is
an example of the 'picaresque' novel: the hero is a roving dog, of little
honesty and considerable roguery; he traverses many lands, undergoing many tricks
of fortune, both good and bad. The story lacks symmetry, but it is nearly
always lively, though frequently coarse, and the minor characters, such as the seaman Tom Bowling, are of considerable interest. His other
novels are The Adventures of Peregrine
Pickle (1751), The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753), The
Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762),
and The Expedition of Humphry
Clinker (1771). The later books follow the plan
of the firs'- with some fidelity. Most of the characters are disreputable; the
plots are as a rule formless narratives of travel and adventure; and a coarse
and brutal humour is present all through. Smollett, however, brings variety
into his novels by the endless shifting of the scenes, which cover many
portions of the globe, by his wide knowledge and acute perception of local
manners and customs, and by his use of a plain and vigorous narrative style.
The Novel of Terror &
The Pre-Romantic Novel
Horace Walpole (1717-97). Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Whig
minister. He touched upon several kinds of literature, his letters being among
the best of their kind. His one novel, The
Castle of Otranto (1764), is of importance, for it was
the first of the productions of a large school (sometimes called the 'terror
school') of novelists who dealt with the grisly and; supernatural as their
subject. Walpole's novel, which he published almost furtively, saying that it
was a translation of a sixteenth century Italian work, described a ghostly
castle, in which we have walking skeletons, pictures that move out of their
frames, and other blood-curdling incidents. The ghostly machinery is often
cumbrous, but the work is creditably done, and as a return to the romantic
elements of mystery and fear the book is noteworthy.
Mrs Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823). This lady was the most popular of the terror novelists, and
published quite a large number of books that followed a fairly regular plan.
Among such were her A Sicilian Romance (1790), The
Romance of the Forest (1791), and the
most popular of them all, The
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Her stories took on almost a
uniform plot, involving mysterious manuscripts, haunted castles, clanking
chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. At the end of all the horrors Mrs Radcliffe
rather spoils the effect by giving away the secrets of them, and revealing the fact
that the terrors were only illusions after all. Nowadays the novels appear
tame, but they showed the way to a large number of other writers, for they were
fresh to the public of their time.
Other Terror Novelists. (a) William
Beckford (1759-1844). The one novel now associated with Beckford's name is Vathek (1786).
Beckford, who was a man of immense wealth and crazy habits, drew largely upon The Arabian Nights for
material for the book. The central figure of the novel is a colossal creature,
something like a vampire in disposition, who preys upon mankind and finally
meets his doom with suitable impressiveness. Beckford had a wild, almost
staggering, magnificence of imagination, and his story has been described as
the best oriental tale in English.
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818).
Lewis is perhaps the crudest of the
terror school, and only one book of his, The
Monk (1795), is worth recording. Lewis, who
is lavish with his horrors, does not try to explain them. His imagination is
grimmer and fiercer than that of arty of the other writers of the same class,
and his book is probably the 'creepiest' of its kind.
Frances Burney (1752-1840), whose married name was Madame D'Arblay, is an important
figure in the history of the novel. The first of the women novelists, she departed
from the preaching morality of Richardson and the extravagances of the horror school
to create the novel of domestic life. Her four novels are Evelina (1778),
Cecilia (1782), Camilla (1796), and The
Wanderer (1814), but her fame rests on the first
two. These are written with a fine simplicity of style, and show her to possess
a considerable narrative faculty and a great zest for life. Johnson, whose
friend ship she enjoyed, called her a "character-monger," a tribute
to her large gallery of striking portraits, the best of which are convincing
and amusing caricatures of the Dickensian type. Her observation of life was
keen and close, and her descriptions of society are in a delightfully satirical
vein, in many ways like that of Jane Austen. Evelina
is additionally interesting in that it
reverts to the epistolary method of Richardson. Her last two novels lack the
lightness of touch of the two best; the influence of Dr Johnson upon her style
was not a happy one. Fanny Burney's letters and Diary are
cleverly satirical and informative pictures of the society life of her day, and
the latter in particular exhibits clearly the keen observation of manners, and
the eye for a character, which are to be seen in her best novels.
JANE AUSTEN
MAJOR
WORKS
Sense
and Sensibility (1811)
Pride
and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield
Park (1814)
Emma
(1816)
Northanger
Abbey (1818)
Persuasion
(1818)
An
Age of Revolution: One
aspect of Austen’s work that has intrigued readers and critics is the
surprising lack of mention of the revolutionary and tumultuous world events
that marked the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in her novels.
Austen was born just one year before the beginning of the American Revolution,
an event of momentous importance in British and world history. She was a
teenager when the French Revolution began, and must certainly have followed the
anti-aristocratic actions of the French revolutionaries with interest and
concern. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, almost every European
power, including Britain, was locked in a desperate struggle with France’s
self-appointed—and seemingly unstoppable—Emperor Napoleon. Only after Napoleon
overextended himself by invading Russia in 1812 did his fortunes sour and the
tide turn in favor of Britain and its allies. Austen lived through a period of
social and political upheaval unlike any other in history, but Austen chose to
place her stories in a local context into which the events of the world seemed
not to intrude. It seems that personal, social, and artistic considerations
likely influenced Austen to avoid even fictional commentary on world events.
Sense
and Sensibility
appeared in 1811; however, early editions
did not include Austen’s name, only that the book had been written by ‘‘A
Lady.’’ The novel was well received and the print run sold out by 1813. Not only
did her success please her, but the money Austen earned from Sense and Sensibility afforded her a certain independence. Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, was an immediate
success, garnering more favorable reviews. Mansfield Park failed to impress the critics, but had popular success,
outselling any of Austen’s other novels during her lifetime.
Excited
by her success (which was recognized by public figures such as the Prince
Regent who was said to have kept a set of her books at each of his residences),
Austen kept working. In 1815 she published Emma, a book about a matchmaking heroine who is
unlucky in love, and began work on Persuasion, a mature novel about a woman who gets a second chance.
Note: Jane
Austen’s novels often pit spirited heroines against men in a ‘‘battle of the
sexes.’’ This theme has been explored in other works of fiction, including:
Gone
With the Wind
(1939), by Margaret Mitchell. This epic
novel follows vivacious Scarlett O’Hara as she survives the Civil War—and a
roller-coaster relationship with the dashing Rhett Butler.
Working
Girl (1988), a film directed by Mike Nichols,
tells the story of a young woman’s tooth-and-nail climb to corporate success in
New York.
Star
Wars (1977), a film directed by George Lucas,
pits insensitive Han Solo against the feisty Princess Leia in a space-opera
setting.
I
Love Lucy (1951-1957), a TV series created by Desi Arnaz,
features Lucille Ball’s humor as a foil to herhusband’s plans and performances.
Marriage
and Social Rank: In
Austen’s fiction, marriage is the ultimate goal and the primary source of conflict.
Ironically, Austen was a spinster throughout her life, but she saw firsthand
the perils of relying on a male relative for financial support. Since women at
the time were not allowed to own property and there were no lucrative
professions for women, women had to rely on family members and marry as soon as
possible in order to live comfortably. This created the ‘‘marriage of
convenience,’’ in which a woman would marry for money or social standing.
However, Austen, who herself turned down a man who was not her intellectual
equal, stands firmly on the side of love in marriage. While secondary characters
often enter into matches of convenience, Austen’s heroines wait for love.
Battle
of the Sexes: Austen
specializes in strong, humorous female characters. Though her female characters
are often flawed, they are placed in contrast to male characters who are
immoral, silly, conniving, or otherwise threaten their happiness. For example, Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price must fend off the advances
of Henry Crawford, a playboy she cannot love. Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice must endure the attentions of Mr. Collins, a ridiculous cleric
who tries to win her hand, and has her happiness threatened by Wickham, a
dashing but immoral suitor who eventually elopes with her sister. While men
often threaten women’s social position and future happiness, they also provide
entertainment and moral support. The lively exchanges between Elizabeth Bennet
and William Darcy are among literature’s most entertaining and humorous
dialogues, and readers will not soon forget such sympathetic male characters as
Captain Wentworth of Persuasion
and Mr. Knightley in Emma.
Pre-Romantic Poetry
WILLIAM COWPER: William Cowper was one of the most popular English poets of the
eighteenth century and is considered one of the forerunners of Romanticism. His
comic ballad ‘‘The Journey of John
Gilpin’’ established his literary reputation; his Olney
Hymns were incorporated into Evangelical liturgy;
and his satires enjoyed widespread popularity. Contemporary critics especially
value his correspondence, ranking him among the English language’s finest
letter writers. A frail personality hounded by severe depression, he expressed
complex psychological currents in his verse.
His mother,
Ann Donne Cowper, was a descendant of the Elizabethan poet John Donne. Her
death from childbirth complications in 1737 was the first source of William Cowper’s
lifelong melancholia, or bouts of depression. The second source came the
following year, at Dr. Pitman’s School in Markyate, where Cowper was
mercilessly bullied by older boys.
‘‘Delia’’: Cowper recuperated and became a
successful student at the Westminster School, following which he was sent to
learn the legal profession with a London solicitor named Chapman. While working
at Chapman’s office, Cowper frequented the home of his uncle, Ashley Cowper,
and three female cousins. By the summer of 1752, he was infatuated with his
cousin Theadora. They courted for several years, but her father forbade them to
marry. Heartbroken, he penned a sequence of love poems to ‘‘Delia’’; they were released in 1825 as part of Cowper’s second
posthumous poetry collection.
Cowper’s
Letters: William
Cowper’s letters are widely admired, especially those he wrote to William
Unwin, Mary’s son, and his cousin Harriot Hesketh, Theadora’s sister. The
private audience of these cultivated friends released the sparkling wit,
disarming candor, and astute
observations
that make his correspondence a unique literary phenomenon. Cowper suffered
several more breakdowns in his later years. The lengthy illness and death of
his longtime companion Mary Unwin in 1795 sent him into despondency.
Retreat
to the Countryside: When
he left the hospital in 1765, he lived in Huntingdon as a boarder at the family
home of an Evangelical minister, the Reverend Morley Unwin. He was drawn to the
maternal figure of Mary Unwin, the minister’s wife. After the sudden death of
Rev. Unwin in 1767, Cowper and the rest of the household moved to Olney. Cowper
enjoyed the peace of this rural town and began to concentrate on writing, starting
with an autobiography (that would be published after his death). He came at
once under the influence of the Reverend John Newton, an Evangelical and former
slave trader. The two men collaborated on the Olney Hymns (1779), of which the most famous is ‘‘Amazing Grace,’’ written by Newton. Cowper’s lyrics place him in the
first rank of English hymnodists; several remain in regular congregational use.
In 1780
a relative of Cowper’s, the Reverend Martin Madan, published a curious treatise
named Thelyphthora, an argument for polygamy as a social
alternative to prostitution. At John Newton’s urging, Cowper responded with Anti-Thelyphthora (1781), a long poem deftly combining satire with religious
fervor. The same combination infused Cowper’s Poems (1782), which became known as the ‘‘Moral Satires.’’ These
didactic verses were praised for
their
vigor, spontaneity, and hard-hitting enunciation of Evangelical doctrine.
The
Task: Cowper’s next
volume, The Task (1785), won him universal critical esteem. This
five-thousand-line poem, written in a relaxed blank verse, is considered his masterpiece.
A broad investigation of man, nature, and society, it is also the first
extended autobiographical poem in English. The scope of its satiric and
patriotic interests, alongside its explorations of rural and domestic life,
make The Task a truly national poem. The public aspects
of the poem, however, are interwoven with distinctly personal ones. Cowper
extols the skill of the gardener, who represents harmony with nature, and the
imagination of the poet, who provides access to beauty and wisdom. Finding joy
and peace in the presence of nature, Cowper proclaims, is the touchstone of
spiritual wholeness. The
Task made Cowper’s a household name for the next
few decades. Augmenting his fame, in the same volume, was ‘‘The Journey of John Gilpin,’’ a narrative ballad ostensibly about
the adventures of a tailor, but in reality a raucous parody of poetic
conventions.
Fear
and Fervor: Cowper’s
mental illness, and constant fear of God’s wrath, influenced the thematic
content of his writing, from his Memoir to
his religious poetry. His Olney Hymns describe inward states of conflict, insecurity, and agony in a
hostile universe occasionally relieved by a glimmer of hope for salvation. Even
light, satirical pieces such as ‘‘The
Journey of John Gilpin’’ are touched with melancholy and a sense of man’s inexorable
loneliness. Lord David Cecil named his biography of Cowper after a telling
image from The Task: ‘‘The Stricken Deer.’’ It is a suitable
summation of Cowper’s poetic stance.
Note: William Cowper wrote several lyrics for the Olney
Hymns that are still sung regularly in
Evangelical congregations. The Christian hymn is among the most enduring of
musical forms, as the following titles demonstrate:
‘‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’’ (c. 1527), a hymn by Martin Luther. The
best-known hymn by the foremost Protestant leader; sometimes called ‘‘The Battle
Hymn of the Reformation.’’
‘‘Amazing Grace’’ (1779), a hymn by John Newton. The most
famous song of the Olney
Hymns and one of the most
popular of all Christian hymns.
‘‘Silent Night’’ (c. 1818), a hymn by Josef Mohr; music by Franz
Xaver Gruber. One of the most popular Christmas carols; in the original German,
‘‘Stille Nacht.’’
‘‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’’ (c. 1860), a hymn by Wallace (often
spelled ‘‘Wallis’’) Willis. An African American spiritual, often sung at
English rugby matches.
‘‘In the Upper Room’’ (1947), a hymn by Lucie Campbell. Written
by the first woman among the great gospel composers, this song is indelibly
associated with the powerful voice of the late gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.
ROBERT BURNS
MAJOR
WORKS
‘‘Auld Lang
Syne’’ (1788)
‘‘The
Battle of Sherramuir’’ (1790)
‘‘Tam o’
Shanter’’ (1791)
‘‘A Red,
Red Rose’’ (1794)
Poet
Robert Burns recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regional experience,
traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religious practice and
belief in such a way as to transcend the specific nature of his inspiration,
becoming finally the national poet of Scotland. Although he did not set out to
achieve that designation, he clearly and repeatedly expressed his wish to be called
a Scotch bard, to extol his native land in poetry and song.
A
Lover of Women and Poetry: While
a young man, Burns acquired a reputation for charm and wit and began to indulge
in romance. He once attributed the beginnings of his poetry to his sensuality:
‘‘There is certainly some connection
between Love and Music and Poetry…
I never had the least thought or
inclination of turning poet till I once got heartily in love, and then rhyme
and song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart.’’
Freedom
and Love: The
topic of freedom—political, religious, personal, and sexual—dominates Burns’s
poetry and songs. Burns’s innumerable love poems and songs are acknowledged to
be touching expressions of the human experience of love in all its phases: the
sexual love of ‘‘The Fornicator,’’
the emotion of ‘‘A Red, Red Rose,’’ and
the happiness of a couple grown old together in ‘‘John Anderson, My Jo.’’
Scottish
Nationalism Burns’s
deep interest in Scotland’s poetic heritage and folkloric tradition resulted in
his amending or composing more than three hundred songs, for which he refused
payment, maintaining that this labor was rendered in service to Scotland. Each
written to an existing tune, the songs are mainly simple yet affecting lyrics
of the common concerns of love and life. A great part of Burns’s continuing
fame rests on such songs as ‘‘Green Grow
the Rashes O’’ and, particularly, ‘‘Auld
Lang Syne.’’
Note: Burns’s
use of the Scottish vernacular is one of the most distinctive aspects of his
poetry. Other poets have used the same approach in their work:
Barrack-Room
Ballads, a poetry collection by Rudyard Kipling. Like Burns, Kipling
wrote poetry in a distinctive regional dialect of the British Isles, in this
case the Cockney slang of the common British enlisted man.
Lyrics
of a Lowly Life, a poetry collection by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Although most of
his poems were written in conventional English, Dunbar, an African American poet,
was one of the first to write poems in the dialect of Southern black culture,
as in this 1896 collection.
The
Works of D. H. Lawrence,
a collection by D. H. Lawrence. Many of Lawrence’s poems were written in the dialect
of his native Nottinghamshire, what critic Ezra Pound called ‘‘the low-life
narrative.’’
Songs
of Jamaica, a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published
in 1912, these poems were the first published in McKay’s native patois, an
English-African hybrid language of the Caribbean islands. McKay would go on to be
a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance of black writers and artists during
the 1920s.
WILLIAM BLAKE
MAJOR
WORKS
The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)
Songs
of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
The
First Book of Urizen (1794)
The
Book of Los (1795)
Jerusalem:
The Emancipation of the Giant
Albion
(1804)
William
Blake was an English poet, engraver, and painter. An imaginative rebel in both
his thought and his art, he combined poetic and pictorial genius to explore
important issues in politics, religion, and psychology. Considered insane and
mostly discounted by his contemporaries, Blake’s reputation as a visionary
artist grew after his death.
Fusion
of Art and Poetry with New Printing Process: From his early teens on, Blake wrote poems, often setting them
to melodies of his own composition. When he was twenty-six, a collection
entitled Poetical Sketches was printed with the help of the Reverend and Mrs. Mathew, who
held a cultural salon and were patrons of Blake. This volume was the only one
of Blake’s poetic works to appear in conventional printed form. He later invented
and practiced a new method.
In 1787,
Blake moved to Poland Street, where he produced Songs of Innocence (1789)
as the first major work in his new process. This book was later complemented by
Songs of
Experience (1794). The magnificent lyrics in these two
collections systematically contrast the unguarded
openness of innocence with the cynicism of experience. They are a milestone in
the history of the arts, not only because they exhibit originality and high
quality but because they are a rare instance of the successful fusion of two
art forms by one man.
Age
of Revolution Sparks Blake’s Imagination: After a brief period of admiration for the religious thinker Emanuel
Swedenborg, Blake produced a disillusioned reaction titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790– 1793). In this satire, the
‘‘devils’’ are identified with energy and creative genius, and the ‘‘angels’’
with repression of desire and the oppressive aspects of order and rationality.
Blake
had become a political radical and sympathized with the American Revolution and
with the French Revolution during its early years. At Poland Street and shortly
after his move to Lambeth in 1793, Blake composed and etched short
‘‘prophetic’’ books concerning these events, religious and political repression
in general, and the more basic repression of the individual psyche, which he
came to see as the root of institutional tyranny. Among these works, all
composed between 1793 and 1795, are America, Europe, The
Book of Urizen, The Book of Los, The Song of Los,
and The Book of
Ahania. In
these poems, Blake began to work out the powerful mythology he refined in his
later and longer ‘‘prophecies.’’ He presented this mythology in his first
epic-length poem, The
Four Zoas (c. 1795–1803), which was never published.
Felpham
Period: Blake
spent the years 1800–1803 working in Felpham, Sussex, with William Hayley, a minor
poet and man of letters. Hayley tried to push Blake toward more profitable
undertakings, such as painting ladies’s fans, but Blake rebelled and returned
to London. One result of this conflict was Blake’s long poem Milton (c. 1800–1810). In this work, the spiritual issues involved in
his quarrel with Hayley are allegorized. Blake’s larger themes are dramatized
through an account of the decision of the poet Milton to renounce the safety of
heaven and return to earth to rectify the errors of the Puritan heritage he had
fostered.
Picture
Books: Blake
did not write or draw specifically for children, but he believed that children
could read and understand his works. He was opposed to the kind of moralistic
writing for children that was done by the clergyman Isaac Watts, whose Divine and Moral Songs for Children, published in 1715, taught readers to be hardworking and avoid
idleness and mischief. Blake believed that children—and adults, for that
matter—should be allowed the freedom to dream and imagine. His first biographer,
Alexander Gilchrist, said in his Life
of William Blake:
Pictor Ignotus that
Blake ‘‘neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for the workday men at all,
rather for children and angels.’’ He called Blake ‘‘‘a divine child,’ whose
playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.’’ Children are
also the subjects of many of his works. Since Blake also did the illustrations for
his writings, some authorities consider his works to be forerunners of the
picture-book form.
Revolutionary
Politics: The
storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 and the agonies of the French
Revolution sent shock waves through England. Some hoped for a corresponding
outbreak of liberty in England while others feared a breakdown of the social
order. In much of his writing Blake argues against the monarchy. In his early Tiriel (c. 1789), Blake traces the fall of a tyrannical king. Blake
also consistently portrays civilization as chaotic, a direct reflection of the
tumultuous times in which he lived.
Politics
was surely often the topic of conversation at the publisher Joseph Johnson’s
house, where Blake was often invited. There Blake met important literary and political
figures such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and
Thomas Paine. According to one legend, Blake is even said to have saved Paine’s
life by warning him of his impending arrest. Whether or not that is true, it is
clear that Blake was familiar with some of the leading radical thinkers of his
day. Another product of the radical 1790s is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Written and etched between 1790 and 1793, Blake’s poem brutally
satirizes oppressive authority in church and state. The poem also satirizes the
works of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher whose ideas once attracted
Blake’s interests. Blake’s work influenced a diverse assortment of later writers
and artists, including Irish poet William Butler Yeats, American poet Allen
Ginsberg, children’s book author and artist Maurice Sendak, and songwriter Bob
Dylan.
Blake’s
Critical Recovery: The
publication in 1863 of Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus helped save Blake’s works from obscurity and established Blake
as a major literary figure. Gilchrist’s biography motivated other studies of
Blake, including Swinburne’s 1868 study of Blake’s prophecies. In the early
twentieth century, John Sampson’s 1905 edition of The Poetical Works, provided a solid text for serious study of Blake as did A.G.B.
Russell’s 1912 catalogue The
Engravings of William Blake, which reproduced many engravings. Joseph Wicksteed’s 1910
study, Blake’s Vision
of the Book of Job,
provided a close analysis of Blake’s
designs and helped to demonstrate that Blake’s art should be interpreted in
careful detail.
Note: Blake
was best known for exploring the role and value of imagination in humanity’s
search for truth. Here are some other works that have similar themes:
Lyrical
Ballads (1798), by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Lyrical
Ballads sought
to emphasize personal experience and imagination over abstract language and
themes.
A
Vision (1937), by William Butler Yeats. Yeats was
greatly influenced by Blake and worked to create his own symbolic mythology in
this dense and complex treatise.
Howl
(1956),
by Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg’s seminal work of the Beat Generation lauded the
misfits and rebels whose minds, he claimed, were ‘‘destroyed by madness’’ brought
on by the constraints of 1950s American social life. Ginsberg was influenced
deeply by Blake, even claiming to have had a vision in which Blake’s voice helped
him understand the interconnectedness of the universe.
*****
Sources
English Literature by Edward
Albert [Revised by J. A. Stone]
History of English Literature,
by Legouis and Cazamian
The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain
and Ireland, by Ronald Carter and John McRae
Gale’s Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature
16.
The Romantic Age
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