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THE AGE OF REASON

(1660 - 1798)
I. RESTORATION

historical background:

 1613 The Globe burned


 1620 The Pilgrims sail for America
 1629 dissolution of Parliament by Charles I

Early Struggle with Parliament

―A shy and dignified figure, he was popular at the time of his coronation, but he immediately
offended his Protestant subjects by his marriage to the Catholic Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis
XIII of France. Charles‘s favorite, Buckingham, was unpopular, and the foreign ventures under
Buckingham‘s guidance were unfortunate, particularly the unsuccessful expedition to Cádiz (1625)
and the two disastrous attempts to relieve French Protestants in La Rochelle (1627 and 1628). Nor
would Parliament willingly grant money to help Charles‘s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the
Protestants in the Thirty Years War. The reign eventuated in the bitter struggle for supremacy
between the king and Parliament that finally resulted in the English civil war.

Parliament had a substantial role in the making of money grants to the king and adopted the tactic
of withholding grants until its grievances were redressed. The Parliament of 1625 refused money,
demanded ministers it could trust, and was soon dissolved by Charles. That of 1626 was dissolved
when it started impeachment proceedings against Buckingham. Charles, to meet his needs for
money, resorted to quartering troops upon the people and to a forced loan, which he attempted to
collect by prosecutions and imprisonments.

Forced to call Parliament again in 1628, he was compelled to agree to the Petition of Right, in
return for a badly needed subsidy. Charles adjourned Parliament when it declared that his
continued collection of customs duties was a violation of the Petition. Although Buckingham was
assassinated (1628), the parliamentary session of 1629 was bitter. It closed dramatically with a
resolution condemning unauthorized taxation and attempts to change existing church practices.

The Years of No Parliament

Charles governed without Parliament for 11 years after 1629, which were marked by popular
opposition to strict enforcement of the practices of the Established Church by Archbishop William
Laud and to the ingenious if disingenuous devices employed by the government to obtain funds.
The royally controlled courts of high commission and Star Chamber waged a harsh campaign
against nonconformists and recusants (Catholics), and large emigrations to America, of both
Puritans and Catholics, took place. The trial (1637–38) of John Hampden for refusal to pay a tax of
ship money greatly increased public indignation. Meanwhile Charles‘s deputy in Ireland, Thomas
Wentworth, earl of Strafford, was carrying out a wide program of reforms through his oppressive
policy of ―Thorough.‖

Renewed Struggles with Parliament

Conditions in England reached a crisis when Charles attempted (1637) to force episcopacy upon
the Scots, an attempt that was violently opposed by the Scottish Covenanters and that resulted in
the Bishops‘ Wars. Unable to wage war effectively, Charles in May, 1640, summoned the so-
called Short Parliament, which demanded redress of grievances before granting funds and was
dissolved.

Another attempt to carry on the war without Parliament failed, and the famous Long Parliament
was summoned in November. Under the leadership of John Pym, John Hampden, and Sir Henry
Vane (the younger), Parliament secured itself against dissolution without its own consent and
brought about the death of Strafford, the abolition of the courts of high commission and Star
Chamber, and the end of unparliamentary taxation.

Charles professed to accept the revolutionary legislation, though he was known to hold strong
views on the divine right of monarchy. Parliament‘s trust in the king was further undermined when
his queen was implicated in the army plot to coerce Parliament, and Charles was suspected of
complicity in the Irish rebellion (1641) and its resulting atrocities, especially in Ulster. In 1641,
Parliament presented its Grand Remonstrance, calling for religious and administrative reforms and
reciting in full its grievances against the king. Charles repudiated the charges, and his
unsuccessful attempt to seize five opposition leaders of Commons in violation of traditional
privilege was the fatal blunder that precipitated war.‖

 1642 beginning of Civil War; theatres closed


 1649 execution of Charles I

Civil War and Execution

―There were no decisive victories in the civil war until Charles was defeated at Marston Moor
(1644) and Naseby (1645). In 1646 he gave himself up to the Scottish army, which delivered him
to Parliament. He was ultimately taken over by the English army leaders, who were now highly
suspicious of Parliament. He escaped (Nov., 1647) to Carisbrooke, on the Isle of Wight, where he
concluded an alliance with the discontented Scots, which led to the second civil war (1648) and
another royalist defeat. Parliament, now reduced in number by Pride‘s Purge (see under Pride,
Thomas) and controlled by Charles‘s most powerful enemies, established a special high court of
justice (see regicides), which tried Charles and convicted him of treason for levying war against
Parliament. He was beheaded on Jan. 30, 1649. To the royalists he became the martyred king
and author of the Eikon Basilike. By his opponents he was considered a double-dealing tyrant.

 1653 Cromwell becomes Lord Protector

Following the English civil war and the execution of Charles I, England was declared (1649) a
commonwealth under the rule of the Rump Parliament. In 1653, however, Oliver Cromwell
dissolved the Rump, replacing it with the Nominated, or Barebone‘s, Parliament (see Barebone,
Praise-God), and when the latter proved ineffectual, he accepted (Dec., 1653) the constitutional
document entitled the Instrument of Government, which had been drawn up by a group of army
officers. By its terms, Cromwell assumed the title lord protector of the commonwealth of England,
Scotland, and Ireland and agreed to share his power with a council of state and a Parliament of
one house. However, although Parliament met regularly, Cromwell‘s protectorate was a virtual
dictatorship resting on the power of the army. After a royalist uprising, he divided (1655) the
country into 11 military districts, each under the administration of a major general who enforced
the rigidly puritanical laws and collected taxes. Toleration was extended to Jews and all non-
Anglican Protestants, but not to Roman Catholics. In 1654, the first of the Dutch Wars was brought
to a close and English sea power turned against Spain. In the Humble Petition and Advice of
1657, Parliament offered Cromwell the throne (which he refused), allowed him to name a
successor, and set up an upper house to be chosen by him; but this attempt at constitutional
revision had little practical effect on the government. Richard Cromwell succeeded as lord
protector on the death of his father in 1658, but he was unable to control the army and resigned in
May, 1659. The Rump was recalled and the Commonwealth resumed, and after a period of chaos
Gen. George Monck recalled the Long Parliament and brought about the Restoration of Charles II.

Lord Protector

In 1649, after the proclamation of the republican Commonwealth, Cromwell led a punitive
expedition into Ireland, especially remembered for the massacre of the royalist garrison at
Drogheda. He then initiated a policy of systematic dispossession of the Irish, transferring their
lands to Protestant proprietors. In 1650 he invaded Scotland and routed the Scottish royalists at
Dunbar; later he defeated the Scots and Charles II himself at Worcester (1651) and left the rest of
the conquest of Scotland to Gen. George Monck.

Cromwell, now virtual dictator of the Commonwealth, dissolved the Rump Parliament in 1653 after
it had failed to effect reforms demanded by the army and had sought to perpetuate its power. His
attempt to replace it by the Nominated (Barebone‘s) Parliament (see Barebone, Praise-God),
appointed by himself from nominations of the Independent congregations, resulted in a reckless,
hopelessly divided body that was finally forced to dissolve itself. A group of army officers then
drew up the constitutional document known as the Instrument of Government (1653), by which
Cromwell became lord protector (see Protectorate). The Parliament of 1654, which was elected
under the terms of the same document, wanted to prepare a new constitution and was soon
dissolved.

After that Cromwell resorted to open military government, dividing England into 11 districts, each
administered by a major-general. Another, more amenable Parliament was summoned in 1656,
and in 1657 it presented to Cromwell a new constitution known as the Humble Petition and Advice
and offered him the crown. He declined the crown but accepted (with some modifications) the
Humble Petition, which further increased his power and set up a second legislative chamber. The
second session of this same Parliament, however, challenged the new constitution, and Cromwell
dissolved it (1658) seven months before his death.

Cromwell‘s foreign policy was governed by the need to expand English trade and prevent the
restoration of the Stuarts, and by the desire to build up a Protestant league and enhance the
prestige of the English republic. He approved the Navigation Act of 1651, which led to the first
(1652–54) of the Dutch Wars, and he pressed the war against Spain (1655–58) as a means of
encroaching on Spanish rights of colonization in America. The Dutch war resulted in several
important naval victories for the English under Admiral Robert Blake, but the Spanish war, apart
from the sinking of a Spanish fleet (also by Blake), brought only Jamaica and imposed a great
strain on English finances.‖

 1658 Cromwell‘s death, Richard Cromwell suceeds his father


 1659 overthrown by army;

Puritanisms: Origins

―Historically Puritanism began early (c.1560) in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as a movement for
religious reform. The early Puritans felt that the Elizabethan ecclesiastical establishment was too
political, too compromising, and too Catholic in its liturgy, vestments, and episcopal hierarchy.
Calvinist in theology, they stressed predestination and demanded scriptural warrant for all details
of public worship. They believed that the Scriptures did not sanction the setting up of bishops and
churches by the state. The aim of the early Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright was to purify the
church (hence their name), not to separate from it. However, by 1567 a small group of lay rigorists
was discovered meeting secretly in London to worship after the pattern of the service of the church
in Geneva.
Persecution and Emigration

During the reign of James I, the Presbyterian majority unsuccessfully attempted to impose their
ideas on the established English church at the Hampton Court Conference (1604). The result was
mutual disaffection and a persecution of the Puritans, particularly by Archbishop William Laud, that
brought about Puritan migration to Europe and America (see Mayflower). Those groups that
remained in England grew as a political party and rose to their greatest power between 1640 and
1660 as a result of the English civil war; during that period the Independents gained dominance.
The great Puritan apologist of this period was John Milton. During the Restoration the Puritans
were oppressed under the Clarendon Code (1661–65), which secured the episcopal character of
the Established Church and, in effect, cast the Puritans out of the Church of England. From this
time they were known as nonconformists.

 1660 Restoration of Charles II; reopening of the theatres

Exiled King

After his father‘s execution (1649), Charles was proclaimed king in Scotland and in parts of Ireland
and England. He accepted the terms of the Scottish Covenanters and went (1650) to Scotland,
where he was crowned (1651), after agreeing to enforce Presbyterianism in England as well as
Scotland. In 1651 he marched into England but was defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the battle of
Worcester. Charles then escaped to France, where he lived in relative poverty. The Anglo-French
negotiations of 1654 forced Charles into Germany, but he moved to the Spanish Netherlands after
he had concluded (1656) a treaty with Spain.

Restoration and Reign

In 1660 Gen. George Monck engineered Charles‘s Restoration to the throne, and the king
returned to England. Charles had promised a general amnesty in his conciliatory Declaration of
Breda, and he and Clarendon, who became first minister, acted immediately to secure passage of
the Act of Indemnity, pardoning all except the regicides. Charles also favored religious toleration
(largely because of his own leanings toward Roman Catholicism), but the strongly Anglican
Cavalier Parliament, which first convened in 1661, passed the series of statutes known as the
Clarendon Code, which was designed to strike at religious nonconformity. The king attempted
unsuccessfully to suspend these statutes by the declaration of indulgence of 1662, which he was
forced (1663) to withdraw.

Charles‘s government endorsed the foreign policy of the Commonwealth with its Navigation Acts,
which contributed to the outbreak (1664) of the second of the Dutch Wars. While the war was
being waged, London suffered the great plague of 1665 and the fire of 1666. Clarendon fell from
power in 1667, the year the war ended, to be replaced by the Cabal ministry.

Charles then took England into the Triple Alliance (1668) with Holland and Sweden, but he
simultaneously sought the support of Louis XIV of France, with whom he negotiated the secret
Treaty of Dover (1670). By this treaty, designed to free the king from dependence on Parliament,
Charles was to adopt Roman Catholicism, convert his subjects, and wage war against the Dutch,
for which Louis was to advance him a large subsidy and 6,000 men. In 1672 the third Dutch War
began. Many suspected it to be a cloak for the introduction of arbitrary government and Roman
Catholicism. Charles was forced to rescind (1672) his second declaration of indulgence toward
dissenters, to approve (1673) the Test Act, and to sign (1674) a peace with the Dutch.

Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, became chief minister on the disintegration of the Cabal and
inaugurated a foreign policy friendly to Holland. Charles, unable to secure money from an
increasingly hostile Parliament, signed a series of secret agreements with Louis XIV, by which he
received large French subsidies in return for a pro-French policy, although he feigned sympathy
with the anti-French movement at home. His alliance with Louis, however, was broken (1677) by
the marriage of his niece Mary to his nephew (and Louis‘s archenemy) William of Orange (later
William III).

Anti-Catholic feeling in England exploded (1678) in the affair of the Popish Plot (see Oates, Titus),
in which Charles did not intervene until his wife, Catherine of Braganza, was accused. However,
the affair was made use of by the 1st earl of Shaftesbury, who led a movement to exclude
Charles‘s brother, the Catholic duke of York (later James II), from succession to the throne,
promoting instead the claim of Charles‘s illegitimate son the duke of Monmouth.

In 1681 the king dissolved Parliament to block passage of Shaftesbury‘s Exclusion Act, and
thenceforth Charles ruled as an absolute monarch, without a Parliament. His personal popularity
increased after the exclusion crisis and particularly after the unsuccessful Rye House Plot. He took
steps to root out the supporters of exclusion (now known as the Whigs) from positions of power,
coercing municipal governments into obedience by the threat that he would rescind the city
charters.

Charles died a Roman Catholic and was succeeded by his brother James. He had no legitimate
offspring but many children by his various mistresses, who included Lucy Walter, Barbara Villiers
(duchess of Cleveland), Louise Kéroualle (duchess of Portsmouth), and Nell Gwyn.

Restoration,

in English history, the reestablishment of the monarchy on the accession (1660) of Charles II after
the collapse of the Commonwealth (see under commonwealth) and the Protectorate. The term is
often used to refer to the entire period from 1660 to the fall of James II in 1688, and in English
literature the Restoration period (often called the age of Dryden) is commonly viewed as extending
from 1660 to the death of John Dryden in 1700.

Restoration of Charles II

After the death of Oliver Cromwell in Sept., 1658, the English republican experiment soon
faltered. Cromwell‘s son and successor, Richard, was an ineffectual leader, and power quickly fell
into the hands of the generals, chief among whom was George Monck, leader of the army of
occupation in Scotland. In England a strong reaction had set in against Puritan supremacy and
military control. When Monck marched on London with his army, opinion had already crystallized
in favor of recalling the exiled king.

Monck recalled to the Rump Parliament the members who had been excluded by Pride‘s Purge in
1648; the reconvened body voted its own dissolution. The newly elected Convention Parliament,
which met in the spring of 1660, was overtly royalist in sympathy. An emissary was sent to the
Netherlands, and Charles was easily persuaded to issue the document known as the Declaration
of Breda, promising an amnesty to the former enemies of the house of Stuart and guaranteeing
religious toleration and payment of arrears in salary to the army. Charles accepted the subsequent
invitation to return to England and landed at Dover on May 25, 1660, entering London amid
rejoicing four days later.

Politics under Charles II and James II

Control of policy fell to Charles‘s inner circle of old Cavalier supporters, notably to Edward Hyde,
1st earl of Clarendon, who was eventually superseded by a group known as the Cabal. The last
remnants of military republicanism, as exemplified in the Fifth Monarchy Men, were violently
suppressed, and persecution spread to include the Quakers. The Cavalier Parliament, which
assembled in 1661, restored a militant Anglicanism (see Clarendon Code), and Charles
attempted, although cautiously, to reassert the old absolutist position of the earlier Stuarts.
The crown, however, was still dependent upon Parliament for its finances. The unwillingness of
Charles and his successor, James II, to accept the implications of this dependency had some part
in bringing about the deposition (1688) of James II, who was hated as a Roman Catholic as well
as a suspected absolutist. The Glorious Revolution gave the throne to William III and Mary II.

England during the Restoration

The Restoration period was marked by an advance in colonization and overseas trade, by the
Dutch Wars, by the great plague (1665) and the great fire of London (1666), by the birth of the
Whig and Tory parties, and by the Popish Plot and other manifestations of anti-Catholicism. In
literature perhaps the most outstanding result of the Restoration was the reopening of the
theaters, which had been closed since 1642, and a consequent great revival of the drama (see
English literature). The drama of the period was marked by brilliance of wit and by licentiousness,
which may have been a reflection of the freeness of court manners. The last and greatest works of
John Milton fall within the period but are not typical of it; the same is true of John Bunyan‘s
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). The age is vividly brought to life in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and
John Evelyn, and in poetry the Restoration is distinguished by the work of John Dryden and a
number of other poets.

 1688 ‗Glorious Revolution'; James II flees, William III & Mary II suceed

the historical background material taken from: ―[Restoration].‖ ―[Charles I].‖ ―[Charles II].‖
―[Cromwell].‖ ―[Protectorate].‖ ―[Puritans].‖ The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2001. www.bartleby.com/65/. [2. 03.2002].

DEVELOPMENTS IN SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND LITERARY LIFE:

¨ the Court Wits - (Etherege, Wycherley) - amoral wit, writing for amusement, influenced theatre

¨ end of Puritan domination in political and social life

¨ repeated some Renaissance ideas: knowledge without limits; worship of classical antiquity;
skepticism, intellectual curiosity

¨ order, rules, limitations, logic

¨ man - imperfect - representative of all kind

¨ in science: detailed investigation, reason, common sense

VERSE

¨ new attitude towards poetry: emphasis on urbanity, decorum, elegance and wit

¨ the French influence visible in poetry


John DRYDEN 1631-1700

¨ introduces a new style of


poetry: conversational, eloquent,
flexible

¨ uses heroic couplet

¨ translator

„To the Lady Castlemaine‟

„A Song for St.Cecilia‟s Day‟

The last period of Dryden‘s literary labours had also witnessed


his final endeavours in lyrical verse—a species of poetry in
which he achieved a more varied excellence than is always
placed to his credit. The Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, designed for
performance on that festival in 1687 by a recently founded
musical society in London, must have been written within a year
after the beautiful ode To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne
Killigrew already mentioned. Though, of course, devoid of any
personal note, and so short as to be of the nature of a chorale
rather than a cantata, it solves its technical problem with
notable skill, and the commanding power of the opening, upon
which the close solemnly returns, is irresistible. 115 Yet neither
in this ode nor in its more famous successor, Alexander’s Feast;
or, The Power of Musique, written for the same festival in 1697,
has Dryden escaped the danger inseparable from arbitrary
variety of length of line and choice of rhythm. In a lyric on a
solemn, and, to all intents, religious, theme—for music was
drawn down from heaven by the inspired saint—any approach
to an ignoble or lilting movement jars upon ear and sentiment;
and this is not wholly avoided in Alexander’s Feast, while, in the
earlier ode, it occurs, so to speak, at the height of the argument.
The example which both these odes attempted to set, of making
―sound an echo to the sense,‖ was not one to be easily
followed; nor can they be themselves regarded as more than
brilliant efforts to satisfy the ill-defined conditions of an artificial
form of lyrical verse.

Dryden‘s lyrical endowment shows itself without ostentation in


the songs scattered through his plays. These products of an
age distinguished by a very strong and carefully cultivated
sense of music often possess considerable charm, even when
divorced from their natural complement, and seem, as it were,
to demand to be sung. 116 But, for the most part, they are
wanton in thought, and, at times, gross in expression, and
there were probably few of his productions for which their
author would have been more ready to cry peccavi.

His contributions to a directly opposite class of lyrics—


hymnody—were long supposed to have been extremely few;
and the question whether their number admits of being very
much enlarged may be said to be still awaiting final judgment.
The only hymn known to have been published by Dryden
himself or in his lifetime is the well known ―paraphrase,‖ as it
calls itself, of the Veni Creator Spiritus, and is a composition of
simple, and even severe, dignity. Together with this hymn,
Scott, on evidence which, so far as it is known, cannot be held
conclusive, admitted into his edition of Dryden two others—
one, a translation of Te Deum, the other (erroneously called by
Scott St. John’s Eve) a translation, in an unusual metre, of the
hymn at evensong on St. John‘s day, which forms part of a
sequence. It has now been discovered that these three pieces
are included in a collection of 120 hymns printed in a book of
Catholic devotions dated 1706; and internal evidence of metre
and diction, coupled with the (late) tradition that Dryden wrote a
number of hymns by way of absolving a penance imposed on
him, has been held to warrant the conclusion that he was the
author of all. Saintsbury can hardly be mistaken in the view
that, if St. John’s Eve be Dryden‘s, other hymns with which this
is connected are, likewise, by his hand; and a number of these
hymns reprinted by Orby Shipley certainly exhibit, together with
many Drydenisms of manner and diction, the freedom which
Dryden always exercised as a translator, together with an
abundance of movement, though relatively little soaring. If they
be Dryden‘s, they offer a further proof of the versatility of his
lyric gifts; but they do not suffice to give him a place among
great English writers of hymns.

Absalom and Achitophel

Religio Laici

Religio Laici, which, for reasons easily guessed, was not


reprinted by Dryden in his lifetime after the third edition (1683),
is classed (by Scott) among his political and historical poems;
but its primary interest is personal, as must have been his
primary motive in composing it. He wished to know where, in
the matter of religion, he stood. Now, for Dryden, there was but
one way of realising any position which he held or any line of
conduct on which he had determined. This was to place it
before himself with the aid of his pen, at whose bidding, if the
expression may be allowed, his thoughts at once fell into lucid
order, ready for argumentative battle. Though Johnson‘s wish
may, in some degree, be father to the thought, when he
declares Religio Laici to be almost the only poem by Dryden
which may be regarded as a voluntary effusion, Saintsbury has
rightly insisted on the spontaneous character of the poem. This
spontaneity is, indeed, all but essential to the conception of the
work; nor was there any possible motive or reason for
simulating it.

translations: Aeneid; Metamorphoses


The Eminence of his Genius.

Yet, even so, it were unjust as well as ungrateful to think of Dryden as a craftsman who, by dint of
taking infinite pains, learnt the secret of simulating that which in the chosen few is inborn. What he
was not, he at no time made any pretence of being. What he did, he did with the whole strength of
one of the most vigorous intellects given to any poet ancient or modern, with constant generosity
of effort, and, at the same time, with masculine directness and clear simplicity of purpose. And,
though the work of his life is not marble without a flaw, yet the whole structure overtops the
expanse of contemporary English literature like the temple shining from the Sunian height over the
sea.

II. THE AUGUSTAN AGE (1700 - 17{40})

¨ art and literature were to instruct and correct

¨ detail subordinated to the whole

¨ an emphasis on intellect (not on emotions)

¨ man – seen as a part of society

¨ nature – seen as the embodiment of order; controlled, restrained

¨ form - clarity, polish, brilliance, wit; heroic couplet as standard

¨ literature's objectives - education and entertainment

¨ philosophy: John LOCKE - tabula rasa,

Alexander POPE 1688-1744

o embodies all the principles of his age

o heroic couplet master

o set conventions of literature

o commonsensical

Windsor Forest

“Ode on St.Cecilia‟s Day”

Essay on Criticism

- new rules, taste of literature

An Essay on Criticism, which appeared in 1711, was, apparently, written in 1709, though Pope
attempted afterwards to assign its composition to an earlier date. It was natural that, being
studiously careful of his form, with the examples of Horace, Vida and Boileau before him (not to
mention Roscommon and Buckinghamshire), he should try to discuss the principles of his art. He
gave his poem, indeed, the title An Essay on Criticism; but it is clear that he is addressing not so
much the ingenuous reader as the intending writer. He once said that he had digested all the
matter in prose before he began it in verse; but, according to Jonathan Richardson, he often spoke
of the Essay as ―an irregular collection of thoughts, thrown together as they offered themselves, as
Horace‘s Art of Poetry was.‖ And this would seem a true description, for Pope was not a pioneer.
He did not aim at leading his generation along new ways, but at recalling them to paths trodden by
the ancients. Originality, even from the point of view of his own days, is not to be expected from
him. But, though he inevitably insisted on truths which may now appear obvious, his genius for
conciseness and epigram has stamped many a truth of this nature with the form that it must wear
for all time. With the Essay, Pope became famous.

The Rape of the Lock; The Dunciad

- mock-heroic poems: vanity of social life

Young Lord Petre, by snipping a lock of Miss Fermor‘s hair, had caused ill-feeling between the
families. Pope was invited by his friend Caryll to allay this by taking the theme for a playful poem.
The Rape of the Lock, in its first form, was written within a fortnight and published anonymously in
Lintot‘s Miscellany, 1712. For the genre, Pope was indebted to Boileau‘s Lutrin, as Boileau had
been to Tassoni‘s Secchia Rapita; but, in its blending of mock-heroic, satire and delicate fancy,
this exquisite specimen of filigree work, as Hazlitt called it, remains unmatched. Pope‘s hand was
never happier than in adding to the original sketch his machinery of sylphs and gnomes. But his
genius for touching appears throughout. Nothing could better illustrate Pope‘s methods of working
than to turn to the earlier version of the six lines beginning canto 1, 13, and to watch how vastly
each one has been improved. The parody of Sarpedon‘s speech in the fifth canto was not
introduced till the edition of 1717. In Germany, The Rape gave rise to a long series of imitations.

Essay on Man

- verse essay

- man in nature, ethics, society, politics, happiness

―[…] During this same time, he had been busy with his Essay on Man, Epistle I of which appeared
in February, 1733, II and III following in the course of the year. These were anonymous, as he was
diffident of their reception. IV appeared under his name in January, 1734. He hoped, at one time,
to extend the work and to fit into its frame his Moral Epistles, from material on false learning and
education which found a place in the fourth Dunciad.

In the account of his design, given in the second volume of his Works (1735), he hopes that, if
the Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite …
and in forming out of all a temperate, yet not inconsistent, and a short, yet not imperfect, system of
Ethics.

Epistle I treats of the nature and state of man with respect to the universe; II of man with respect to
himself; III of man with respect to society; IV of man with respect to happiness. The intention
running through the whole is expressed in the couplet:

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,


But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Pope‘s methods of composition, his want of philosophical training and his inability to conduct a
sustained argument made it impossible for him to produce a great philosophical poem. It must be
granted that he has no harmonious and clearly developed system, and often fails to recognise the
logical results of his beliefs. But it does not follow that, because he was a loose thinker, he is not,
in the main, expressing his genuine feelings or what he fancies to be such. While recognising that
he is no metaphysician, we should not lose sight of the exquisite workmanship of separate
passages or of the interest of the whole as an expression of contemporary thought. Bolingbroke,
in one sense, was the begetter of the poem. The legend that Pope merely versified a prose sketch
by Bolingbroke is absurd; that the poet was deeply indebted to him is certain. There are passages
in Bolingbroke‘s philosophical fragments that must have been known to Pope when he was
composing the Essay, and, as the poet‘s own philosophical reading was superficial, it is probable
that, in many cases, the thoughts of others had come to him through Bolingbroke‘s mind. At the
time when Pope wrote, newer and more liberal modes of thought were not yet generally accepted
or assimilated, or their relation to orthodoxy clearly defined, nor was Pope the only man whose
religious views hovered between unsectarian Christianity and something that could barely be
distinguished from deism. It is easy to show that Pope, in one place, is pantheistic, in another a
fatalist, in yet another deistical, though he repudiated the charge; that his theory of self-love and
reason will not stand examination; that his conception of the historical development of political and
religious organisations is vague in the extreme. But the fact that the Essay is still read with
pleasure is a proof of the consummate power of the style. It attracted a wider attention than any
other of Pope‘s works. A Swiss professor, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, proceeded to demolish its
philosophy, and it inspired Voltaire to write La Loi Naturelle (1756). Pope, dismayed at Crousaz‘s
onslaught, was overjoyed when Warburton came to his aid in a set of letters appearing in The
Works of the Learned (1738–9). ―You understand me,‖ he wrote, ―as well as I do myself; but you
express me better than I can express myself.‖ During the remainder of Pope‘s life, Warburton was
one of his chief intimates. He became the authorised commentator on Pope‘s poems and was left
by will the copyright of all his published works.‖

translated: Iliad, Odyssey

Samuel Butler Hudibras

- poetic satire (a typical kind of writing in Restoration, it is supposed to


ridicule human manners and to attack one‘s enemies –political and personal)

PROSE (Restoration & Augustan)

John Evelyn

Samuel Pepys

- diaries
Richard Steele & Joseph Addison

first magazines: The Tatler 1709 - 1711

The Spectator 1st Mar 1711 – 1714

- included pieces of advice, entertainment, descriptions of manners, morals, pieces of


literature

In any case, Steele and Addison could hardly have created the novel, after creating Mr. Spectator
as their ideal of editorship. That taciturn and contemplative investigator has intellectual curiosity,
but little sympathy. He ranges over a field so incredibly wide that he is forced to see life from a
distance. Steele and Addison do not always stand aloof. They had shown, in occasional papers,
that they understood the human heart and the pathos of unrecorded destiny; but they never, for
long, escape from their own conception of sporadic and dispassionate observation. It was no small
effort of creativeness to unify in one clear-cut character vague tendencies towards critical
contemplation, though the spectacle of a half-formed and half-humanised democracy was too
engrossing in its outlines to leave room for the intensive study of a novelist. So, the personalities
of the Spectator‘s club tend to fade out of importance, and the journal confined its development to
the lines which Addison had already marked out. It covered practically the same ground as The
Tatler, ridiculing or inveighing against old-fashioned ideals of gallantry and self-indulgence, urging
that kindness is better than cleverness, that self-suppression is the essence of good
breeding; penetrating the secrets of home life and exposing the humiliations of citizens who affect
aristocratic immorality, the stupidity of husbands who tyrannise over their wives or fathers over
their children, the folly of women who marry for money or think that the pleasures of society are
preferable to the duties of the household. As Steele took the responsibility of seeing that ―copy‖
was forthcoming day by day, a few of his papers are still written with that hurried diffuseness which
has lost The Tatler many readers. In his best work, he conforms to the studied simplicity and
artistic concentration which Addison had developed in The Tatler and was continuing to cultivate
with great success.

But, if The Spectator surpassed its predecessor in style, it achieved an even greater advance in
thought. The moralists of the seventeenth century had drawn their wisdom from books, Bickerstaff
had drawn his from experience; while Addison showed how to draw from both sources. It is
surprising how much quaint and curious lore is introduced into the pages of The Spectator merely
to give point or freshness to an uninspiring theme, as where the buyers of lottery tickets suggest
the legend of Mahomet‘s coffin suspended in mid-air by the force of two magnets, or the curiosity
of the town concerning the letter with which each essay was signed is mocked by means of a
dissertation on cabalism. It is, however, when these writers continue Bickerstaff‘s more serious
duties of censorship that the full influence of literature becomes most marked. The Tatler had
criticised the follies and foibles of society by the light of common sense; The Spectator never fails
in its higher criterion—the mellow and dignified experience of antiquity. Sometimes, the petulant
efforts of modern writers are compared with the noble simplicity of ancient literature. Sometimes,
the pettiness or malice of the writers themselves is reproved on the authority of Simonides,
Cicero, Epictetus, or by a description of the Augustan circle. In these respects, Addison differed
only in method and thoroughness from Jacobean essayists, who quoted Roman or Italian authors
whenever their reading rendered them discontented with the worn-out traditions of their own
society. But Mr. Spectator went far deeper than this. Not only did he quote the judgments and
counsels of the ancients on questions common to all moralists of all ages; but, when straying from
the beaten track, and counselling his contemporaries on their peculiarities and eccentricities, he
was still guided by a Roman sense of self-respect and reasonableness. His exquisite portrait of
the valetudinarian who took his meals in a weighing chair is really inspired by Martial‘s contempt
for those who are more anxious to live than to live rightly. The sense of solemnity which comes
over Mr. Spectator in Westminster abbey descends on him from Lucretius, and Seneca would
have approved of the diary of an idle man and of that of a woman of fashion.
before you go on, refer to the 18th century novel section in the next unit

Daniel DEFOE 1660-1731

DEFOE is known to our day chiefly as the author of Robinson Crusoe, a pioneer novelist of
adventure and low life. Students, indeed, remember that he was also a prolific pamphleteer of
unenviable character and many vicissitudes. To his early biographers, he was not merely a great
novelist and journalist, but a martyr to liberal principles and a man of exalted probity. His
contemporaries, on the contrary, inclined to regard him as an ignorant scribbler, a political and
social outcast, a journalist whose effrontery was equalled only by his astonishing energy. There is,
probably, a measure of truth in all these views; it is certainly true that the novelist we remember
was evolved out of the journalist we have forgotten.

Essay on Projects

- essayist, journalist, satirist,


The Shortest Way with the Dissenters
pamphleteer
- pamphlet
- novelist "the father of English
novel" periodical: The Review (1704-13)

Robinson Crusoe (1719)

- first novel but it has no evident plot

The immediate and permanent popularity of Robinson Crusoe is a


commonplace of literary history. Defoe, who had a keen eye for
his market, produced, in about four months, The Farther
Adventures of his hero, which had some, though less, vogue, and,
a year later, Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprizing
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a volume of essays which had
no vogue at all. The original part, The Strange and Surprizing
Adventures, at once stirred up acrimonious critics, but, also,
attracted many imitators and, in the course of years, became the
occasion of legends and fantastic theories. All these—for
example, the story that Harley was the real author of the book—
may be dismissed without hesitation. Almost equally without
foundation, despite his own statements, is the notion that
Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of Defoe‘s life. It may even be
doubted whether he ever hawked his manuscript about in order to
secure a publisher. Some things, however, may be considered
certain with regard to this classic. Defoe wrote it primarily for the
edification, rather than for the delectation, of his readers, although
he did not evade giving them pleasure and although, assuredly,
he took pleasure himself in his own creation. It is equally clear
that, in many of its pages, Defoe the writer of pious manuals is to
be discovered; in others, Defoe the student of geography and of
volumes of voyages; in others, Defoe the minute observer and
reporter. The book is a product that might have been expected
from the journalist we know, save only for the central portion of
the story, the part that makes it a world classic, the account of
Crusoe alone on his island. Here, to use a phrase applied by
Brunetière to Balzac, Defoe displays a power of which he had
given but few indications, the power to make alive. This power to
make alive is not to be explained by emphasis upon Defoe‘s
command of convincing details or by any other stock phrase of
criticism. It is a gift of genius, denied to preceding English writers
of prose fiction, displayed by Defoe himself for a few years in a
small number of books, and rarely equalled since, although after
him the secret of writing an interesting and well-constructed tale
of adventure was more or less an open one. The form of his story
could be imitated, but not its soul. The universal appeal implied in
the realistic account of the successful struggle of one man against
the pitiless forces of nature was something no one else could
impart to a book of adventure, something Defoe himself never
caught again. It is this that links Robinson Crusoe with the great
poems of the world and makes it perhaps the most indisputable
English classic of modern times, however little of a poet, in a true
sense, its author may have been.

Captain Singleton

Moll Flanders

Journal of the Plague Year

Jonathan SWIFT 1667-1745

- pamphleteer, novelist

A Modest Proposal - pamphlet

A Tale of a Tub - satire

Gulliver’s Travels - novel

One of the greatest and most characteristic of Swift‘s general satires is A Tale of a Tub, written for
the universal improvement of mankind, an early work, composed about 1696, and published, with
The Battle of the Books, in 1704. In his later years, when his powers were failing, we are told that
Swift was seen looking at this volume and was heard to say, ―Good God, what a genius I had
when I wrote that book.‖ A considerable, but by no means the largest or ablest, portion of the
work is occupied by an account of the quarrels of the churches, told in the famous story of three
brothers, Peter, Martin and Jack, representing Roman catholics, Anglicans and puritans; of the
coat bequeathed to them by their father, whose will, explaining the proper mode of wearing it,
they first interpreted each in his own way, and then, after many ingenious evasions of it, locked up
in a strong box; and of their subsequent quarrels concerning the will and its significance.
Throughout, the brothers act in accordance with the doctrine that beings which the world calls
clothes are, in reality, rational creatures or men, and that, in short, we see nothing but the clothes
and hear nothing but them—a doctrine which Carlyle had in mind when he wrote his Sartor
Resartus.

The manner in which Swift dealt with religious questions in this book led to suspicions as to the
genuineness of his Christianity—a suggestion which Swift regarded as a great wrong. He said
that he had attacked only Peter (who insisted, in turn, on being called ―Mr. Peter,‖ ―Father Peter‖
and ―Lord Peter‖) and Jack (who called his hatred of Peter zeal, and was much annoyed by
Martin‘s patience), and that he had not made any reflections on Martin. What he satirised was not
religion, but the abuse of religion. This defence is not very convincing; though we need not doubt
Swift‘s orthodoxy, we cannot but feel that a scoffer would read the book with greater relish than a
believer. The contempt poured on Roman catholics and dissenters is often in the worst taste, and
touches upon doctrines and beliefs which an earnest member of the church of England would
think it dangerous to ridicule. Such attacks on important doctrines may easily be treated as
attacks on Christianity itself.

But A Tale of a Tub is far more than an account of the wrangles of the churches. It is a skilful
and merciless dissection of the whole of human nature. To the satire on vanity and pride, on
pedantry and on the search for fame, in the introductory dedication to Somers and the delightful
dedication to prince Posterity, is added an attack on bad writing, which is continued, again and
again, throughout the work. In conclusion, Swift observed that he was trying an experiment very
frequent among modern authors, which is to write upon nothing: the knowledge when to have
done was possessed by few. The work contains entertaining digressions, in one of which the
author satirises critics. In former times it had been held that critics were persons who drew up
rules by which careful writers might pronounce upon the productions of the learned and form a
proper judgment of the sublime and the contemptible. At other times, ―critic‖ had meant the
restorer of ancient learning from the dust of manuscripts; but the third and noblest sort was the
―true critic‖ who had bestowed many benefits on the world. A true critic was the discoverer and
collector of writers‘ faults. The custom of authors was to point out with great pains their own
excellences and other men‘s defects. The modern way of using books was either to learn their
titles and then brag of acquaintance with them, or to get a thorough insight into the indexes. To
enter the palace of learning at the great gate took much time; therefore, men with haste and little
ceremony use the back door. In another digression, Swift treats of the origin, use and importance
of madness in a commonwealth. He defined happiness as ―a perpetual possession of being well
deceived.‖ The serene and peaceful state was to be a fool among knaves. Delusion was
necessary for peace of mind. Elsewhere, Swift confesses to a longing for fame, a blessing which
usually comes only after death.

In wit and brilliancy of thought, Swift never surpassed A Tale of a Tub; and the style is as nearly
perfect as it could well be. Swift here allows himself more colour than it to be found in his later
writings. In spite of discursiveness and lack of dramatic interest, the book remains the greatest of
English satires.

quoted material taken from: Ward & Trent, Et Al. The Cambridge History Of English And American
Literature. Volumes VIII - X A. R. WALLER, M.A., New York: G.P. Putnam‘s Sons, 1907–21; New
York: Bartleby.Com, 2000 (www.bartleby.com/Cambridge/). [2002. 03. 02].

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