English literature

English literature

Elaborated by: Scutari Victoria

Literature - spiritual treasure of mankind

Literature - spiritual treasure of mankind

Contents: DefinitionMain CharacteristicsMain Figures

Neoclassicism comprised a return to the classical models, literary styles, and values of ancient Greek and Roman authors. Neoclassicism refers to a broad tendency in literature and art enduring from the early seventeenth century until around 1750.Difinition

Characteristics of Neoclassicism Imitation and Nature: Two of the concepts central to neoclassical literary theory and practice were imitation and nature, which were intimately related. Imitation The imitation of classical models, especially Homer and Vergil.Nature the harmonious and hierarchical order of the universe, including the various social and political hierarchies within the world.

The neoclassical writers generally saw the ancients such as Homer and Vergil as having already discovered and expressed the fundamental laws of nature. Hence, the external world, including the world of human action, could best be expressed by modern writers if they followed the path of imitation already paved by the ancients. Invention was of course allowed, but only as a modification of past models, not in the form of a rupture.

The neoclassical writers

18th Century pOETRY

The age of Swift and Pope The age of Samuel Johnson The beginning of romanticism (1700-1745) (1745- 1789) (1789- 1800)

FAMOUS WRITERS

FAMOUS WRITERSFAMOUS WRITERS

1.Alexander Pope

2.Jonathan Swift

3.Daniel Defoe

4.Samuel Richardson

5.Henry Fielding

6.Laurence Sterne

Alexander Pope The most important English neoclassical poet of the 18 th poetry; Born May 21, 1688 (Restoration), LondonCrippled at 12; hunchbackNever married, but involved with two women in his lifeMartha Blount and Lady Mary Wortley MontaguNever formally educated because he was CatholicGained an appreciate for the classics and writingConformed to strict writing rulesGreatest work (at 24) was The Rape of the Lock, a mock-heroicFinancially independent through translations of the Iliad and the OdysseyDied 1744, Twickenham

His works :

The pastorals;Essay on man;Essay on criticism reflects his desire to rival Boileaus art poetic;The Rape of the Lock;Steel and Addition:The tattler in 1709 and The spectator in 1711The spectator includes representative of various section of society.The work Addition reveals at once the charm of the old England and the coming of the newTo Lord BathurstOn the use of the richesOf the knowledge & character of menOf the characters of womenThe Messiah

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Popes Methods:Pope and the 18th CenturyNo advantage of vernacular speech, but he used colloquialisms;Mature outlook, poise and control, careful judgment;Exposed shallow flaws in society;ImitationRe-creation of a work;Pope translated old into Augustan phraseology;

Pope and SocietyPoked fun at society, e.g. The Rape of the LockCommentary on British legal system;Biting satire against others;Pope and the ClassicsLooked to Homer (favorite) and French classicism;Pope and Didactic PoetryTeach lessons to society;Hope springs eternal in the human breast and A little learning is a dangerous thing

The Rape of the Lock

Alexander Pope

The Epic ConventionsHigh formal dictionInvocation of the Musemachinery (i.e. gods or supernatural figures)Gods speak to hero in a dreamThe arming of the heroSacrifice to the godsExhortation of the general to the troopsCatalog of the armiesBattle scenesDescent into the underworldIntercession of the godsAscension of the dead into the heavens

Satire & the Mock HeroicSATIRE: the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

MOCK HEROIC is a form of satire that adapts the elevated heroic style of the classical epic poem to a trivial subjecthumourObject of attack

Background Refashioned like Virgils Aeneid or Homers Odyssey Pope had three aims:Patch a feud between two well-known families (a lock of hair was stolen)Patch a feud between two well-known families (a lock of hair was stolen)Make fun of the epic conventions

The strategy of Popes mock-epic is not to mock the form itself, but to mock his society in its very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of the traditional epic subjects and the bravery and fortitude of epic heroes: Popes mock-heroic treatment inThe Rape of the Lockunderscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion, and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues.

Historical Background The Rape of the Lock is a social satire, it discloses the falsehood of social conventions and exposes the false values of age in which female beauty is used as a weapon, while reputation. The poem reconstructs the world of fashion in the 18th centry.

Characters:Belinda- Belinda is based on the historical Arabella Fermor, a member of Popes circle of prominent Roman Catholics. Robert, Lord Petre (the Baron in the poem) had precipitated a rift between their two families by snipping off a lock of her hair.The Baron- This is the pseudonym for the historical Robert, Lord Petre, the young gentleman in Popes social circle who offended Arabella Fermor and her family by cutting off a lock of her hair. In the poems version of events, Arabella is known as Belinda.Caryl- The historical basis for the Caryl character is John Caryll, a friend of Pope and of the two families that had become estranged over the incident the poem relates. It was Caryll who suggested that Pope encourage a reconciliation by writing a humorous poem.Goddess- The muse who, according to classical convention, inspires poets to write their versesAriel- Belindas guardian sylph, who oversees an army of invisible protective deitiesUmbriel- The chief gnome, who travels to the Cave of Spleen and returns with bundles of sighs and tears to aggravate Belindas vexationBrillante- The sylph who is assigned to guard Belindas earringsClarissa- A woman in attendance at the Hampton Court party. She lends the Baron the pair of scissors with which he cuts Belindas hair, and later delivers a moralizing lecture.

,s- Belindas friend, named for the Queen of the Amazons and representing the historical Gertrude Morley, a friend of Popes and the wife of Sir George Browne (rendered as her beau, Sir Plume, in the poem). She eggs Belinda on in her anger and demands that the lock be returned.

JonathanSwift1667-1745

Gullivers Travels

Jonathan Swift, Irish author and journalist, the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Swift's best known work is Gulliver's Travels (1726).Swift was born in Dublin on November 30,1667. He studied at Kilkenny Grammar School (1674-82) and at Trinity College in Dublin (1682-89), receiving his B.A. in 1868 and M.A. in 1692.

His most famous works other than Gulliver's Travels include The Battle Of The Books (1697) which explores the merits of the ancients and the moderns in literature and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), a religious satire. In Arguments Against Abolishing Christianity (1708) the narrator argues for the preservation of the Christian religion as a social necessity.

Gullivers TravelsJonathans masterpiece, Gullivers Travels appeared in 1726. It is divided into four books, but the young people prefer only two of them: Gullivers voyages to Lilliput ( where the people are six inches high) and Brobdingnag (where the people are giants). The Lilliputians fight wars which seem foolish. The King of Brobdingnag thinks that people are the most terrible creatures on the Earth.

Gullivers Travel as a satire:1.Multi-layered text.2.Swifts satire is inspired by his hatred of mankind.3.His ridiculous jokes appear very serious.4.The novel is the imagination of Swift, a fully fictional world, but the real intent is different. 5.The society seems unreal with it has a magic mirror.6.The novel can be read as the most powerful attack ever made against man's wickedness and stupidity.

Introduction Gulliver's Travelsis an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a new voyage.

Characters:1.Gulliver- the protagonist and the narrator of the story. The novel is about his journey, his exposure to different worlds.2.The Emperor of Liliput3.The farmer- Gullivers master in Brobdingnag4.Glumdalclitch- the farmers daughter5.The Queen and the King of Brobdingnag6.Lord Munodi- Lord of Lagado, Laputa island7.Yahoos- they represent savage human society8.Houyhnhnms- they represent disciplined, cultured society9.Gullivers Houyhnhnms master

Themes

Might Versus RightGullivers Travelsimplicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral righteousness should be the governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as a giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size, and as one who does not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the hugeness of everything from insects to household pets. His first encounter with another society is one of entrapment, when he is physically tied down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a farmer. He also observes physical force used against others, as with the Houyhnhnms chaining up of the Yahoos

The Individual Versus SocietyLike many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands,Gullivers Travelsexplores the idea of utopiaan imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the description in PlatosRepublicof a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by Thomas MoresUtopia.Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of PlatosRepublicare raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness. Swift has the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.

Symbols

LilliputiansThe Lilliputians symbolize humankinds wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gullivers travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a nave consumer of the Lilliputians grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him. Their formally worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the nave Gulliver.The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention of armies proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visitsonly in Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays.

LaputansThe Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use in the actual world. As a profound cultural conservative, Swift was a critic of the newfangled ideas springing up around him at the dawn of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great intellectual experimentation and theorization. He much preferred the traditional knowledge that had been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the ludicrous side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local academy is more inclined to practical application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population. Even up above, the pursuit of theoretical understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans

The HouyhnhnmsThe Houyhnhnms areendued with a proportionable degree of reasonandorderly and rational, acute and judicious. The Houyhnhnmsarethe Perfection of Naturewhilethe yahoos were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutesPart IV of Gullivers Travels describes man as a lump of deformity and disease both in body and mind, smitten with pride.Swift has so muchhatred towards mankind that he makes Gulliver tell- I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an odious animal, for which a had so utter an hatred.

Conclusion:Gullivers Travels is presentation of an impossible physical smallness of the human race is desired to show the possible mental smallness.

The English Novel of the 18th CenturyThe present English word, Novel, derives from the Italian novella for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin novella. It was born in the 18th century, dealing with the life of the city- dweller, the middle-class man, the bourgeois.It pictured life as lived by the individual in society.The novel deals with human relations viewed institutionally and also with the inner life of characters.

The writers who did really make contributions in improving the novel of the 18th century are:

Daniel Defoe

Samuel Richardson

Henry Fielding

Laurence SterneDaniel

The novelThe picaresque novelThe novel of adventures

The novel of travelsThe epistolary novelThe Gothic novelThe satirical novelThe Quixoticnovel

Any novel is made up of two type of text:The paratext- letters to the readers , foots-notes, or any other part of the novel that is exterior to it and usually coments upon it.

The literary text- imparts information about the world of the narrated events.

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There are two types of novels:

The novels with a narratorThe novels without a narrator

DANIEL DEFOEMoll Flanders- mark the birth of modern novel.

Presented a world of action

Autobiography:Born to James and Alice Foe of London in 1660James Foe was a butcher.Defoe studied at Charles Morton's Academy in London.Defoe married Mary Tuffley in 1684, the daughter of a London merchantHe was possibly a merchant in Spain from 1678 to 1683.Defoe was part of the Duke of Monmouths failed rebellion against King James II, a Catholic king.Daniel was unable to attend such traditional and prestigious schools as Oxford and Cambridge.Defoe's education began in the Rev. James Fisher's school in Dorking, and later, at about the age of fourteen, he was enrolled in the Dissenting academy in Newington Green.

DANIEL DEFOEPicaresque novelNovel of adventuresInfluenced by journalistic styleMoll Flanders

IntroductionThe Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders(commonly known simply asMoll Flanders) is a novel written byDaniel Defoe in 1722.Moll Flanders narrates a female-picaros authobiography. She is born in prison. She grows with different people and in all kind of circumstances. As a woman her options are limited and Moll embarks on a rollicking career of incest, bigamy and crime. Five times married, a whore and a thief, her business is survival.

Turning points in Moll FlandersMolls birth in NewgateMoll is placed with a nurseMolls first act of prostitutionMolls first marriage, with RobinThe marriage with the half-brother and the discovery of her motherMolls affair with a married man and the other two marriages(Lancashire husband, Jemy, and the banker)Moll begins a life of crimeMoll is caught and imprisoned in Newgate, where she meets JemyMoll rediscover in America her and her brothers son Molls sentence is reduced Moll with Jemy returns to England at the age of 70.

The three main themes in the novel

Conclusion:Moll shows the desire to repent on many occasions, but it often seems forced. Moll's first repentance appears when Robin proposes marriage.

'I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I have repented heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of conscience, for I was a stranger to those things, but I could not think of being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other'

Later on, when Moll is imprisoned, she describes her life.

a horrid Complication of Wickedness, whoredom, adultery, incest, lying, theft, and in a word everything but Murder and Treason

Richardson's greatest contribution was his introduction of character insight to the novel.

Samuel RichardsonThe Father epistolary novelsPresents a world of feeling

Clarissa

by Samuel Richardson

The epistolary novels

Key Facts:FULL TITLEClarissa, or The History of a Young LadyAUTHORSamuel RichardsonTYPE OF WORKNovelGENREEpistolary, realist, psychologicalLANGUAGEEnglishTIME AND PLACE WRITTEN1740s, LondonDATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION17471748(7serial volumes)PUBLISHERSamuel RichardsonNARRATORNone. The plot is presented in a series of letters written by the characters.POINT OF VIEWThe story is told in a series of letters, giving the point of view of several characters. The characters provide information about one another, but there is no omniscient or objective narrator.TONEVaries; Clarissa and Belfords letters tend to be serious, while Lovelace and Annas are humorous and sometimes ironic.TENSEPresentSETTING (TIME)Mid-eighteenth centurySETTING (PLACE)The English countryside; LondonPROTAGONISTClarissa HarloweMAJOR CONFLICTClarissa struggles to maintain her virtue against Lovelaces plots and violence.

Clarissatells the story of a virtuous, beautiful young woman who is brought to tragedy by the wickedness of her world. The eighteen-year-old Clarissa Harlowe is universally loved and admired, considered an exemplary woman by everyone around her. The Harlowes are an up-and-coming family, possessing great wealth but little status. The other members of the family are avaricious and eager to improve their standing in the world, and Clarissa becomes the victim of their greed

Themes

The immoral rake versus the innocent heroine;The individual versus society;The rewards of virtue and the punishments of evil;

MOTIFSEnclosure;Dreams;Money

Moll VS CLARISSA

Defoes novels present the middle class striving for economic security.Riscardsons book show looking for a system of moral values.

Henry Fielding Tom Jones

First Narrator concerned with the architecture of his novels

Henry Fielding was well known novelist & drametist.Born on April 22, 1707 in England.Educated from Eton College.Trained in Law.His literary career was began in London.Best known works are Tom Jones, Miscellanies and Amelia.He criticized Government and social convetionsDied on October 8, 1774 in Libson, Portugal.

About novelThis novel deals with Toms life and nature.Major themes of this novel are: Toms love, Villainy of some people, hypocrisy & human nature.

In Tom Jones, Fielding clearly appeals to the readers sagacity and urges the reader not to be lazy or complacent.A reader becomes somebody who should constantly engage in discernment.Through this process, the readers judgement is continually improved. Reading becomes a learning process.The meaning of a novel materializes only through the responses of the reader.

ConclusionFielding was different, though, in that he has been called "the first unashamed novelist in England" for his use of an omniscient narrator over an autobiography form.

Laurence sterne

Tristram ShandyAnti-novel

ANTI-NOVEL:

The elements of the plot are reduced to the minimum;Many false begining, disgresions, blanks and asterics in the text stress the inability of words to communicate;The inadequacy of language and reason;The failure of fiction to discover truth;

Laurence sterne

Laurence sterneTry to achives a balance between mind and heart.Sterns work aims at symphathy, identification, concern for common aspects of life, for any living creature.Sterns characters have a story, a trade, an individuality.Sterns novel no longer follows the memoir style, with the chronological progression. The novel opens with events occurring in 1717 and ends with an episode of 1714.