major literary writers of the Neo- Classical age. (paper-2- Neo-Classical Literature)

v  Name : Dave Nimesh B.

Class: M.A. (semester -1)

Roll No. 20

Paper : 2 ( Neo Classical  literature)

Topic :Major writers of the Neo Classical age

Submitted to: Department of English

M.K. Bhavnagar University.

‘Major writers of the Neo-Classical Age’

·      Introduction

Neo-Classical age is considered as a very remarkable age of English literature. In this age literature proceeds in many forms like prose, poetry, drama, novel and many others. And in creating this wonderful form of literature there is immense contribution of many great writers. Some very important of them are describe as under.

Ø   Prose writers

v     Jonathan Swift  (1667-1745)

                    Biography

Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. His father died before swift’s birth so the boy was thrown upon the charity of an uncle, who paid for his education in Ireland. Much of his distemper was due to purely physical causes, for he suffered from an affection of the ear that ultimately touched his brain and caused insanity. In 1686, at the age of nineteen, he left trinity college. An embittered man , he spent the last thirty years of his life in gloom, and largely in retirement. His last years were passed in silence and, at the very end lunacy.

His poetry

Swift would have been among the first to smile at any claim being advanced for him on the score of his being a great poet, though he always longed to excel in poetry, yet in bulk his verse is considerable. His poems were to a large extent recreations, add verses to his friends.

In his poems he is as a rule lighter of touch and more placeable in humour  than he is in his prose. His favourite metre is the octosyllabic couplet, which he handles with dexterity.

His prose

His first noteworthy book was the Batttle of the books, published in 1704. The theme of the work is well known one, being the dispute between ancient and modern authors. Swift gives the theme a half allegorical, mock –heroic setting, in which books in a library at length literally contend with one another.

A Tale  of a Tub also published in 1704, though it was written as early as 1696, is regarded by many as swift’s best work. It certainly reveals his power at its highest. It is a religious allegory.

A Tale of a Tub is full of wit and brilliant in its imaginative power and the incisiveness of its thought.

From a literary point of view, the next important period of life was from 1710, several of them were written for The Examiner, a Tory journal of which he was given charge, and the best known are The conduct of Allies (1711) and Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty (1712). And The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714). To this period also belongs journal to Stella, which is a kind of informal

private log book. His other important work are The Drapier’s Letters(1724) , which gives him population. Then followed some miscellaneous political work, aimed at the improvement of the lot of the oppressed and poverty stricken irish. And then longest and his most famous book The Gulliver’s Travels (written between 1720 and 1725 and published in 1726).

The  style  of swift is best  is not mannered or laboured , clean, powerful, and tireless, ease without being slovenly and as clear as summer noonday.

Swift is greatest English dramatist. He restrict himself to general rather than personal attacks,

and his work has a cosmic , elemental force, which is irresistible and, at times, almost frightening. His directions of humanity shows a powerful mind relentlessly and fearlessly probing into follies and hypocricy, but he is never merely distructive.

Joseph Addison    (1672-1719)

· HIS LIFE

Educated at the charter house, Addison went to Oxford. He  early made his mark as a serious and accomplished scholar.

In  1704 it is said that the instigation of the  leaders of the whigs, he wrote the poem The Camoaign, praising war policy of the whigs in general. This poem brought him fame and fortune. He obtained many appointments and pensions, married a dowager countess and became a secretary of state. Two years later  he died, at the early age of forty-seven.

His poetry

In his Latin verses Addison attained early distinction. These verses were highly praised at a time for proficiency in such a medium was of some significance. Then his campaign in 1704 gave him reputation as one of the major poets of the age. It is written in Heroic couplet.

His other poetical works worthy of notice are hymns which are melodious, scholarly and full of cheerful piety. The one that begins ‘The Spacious Firmament on High’ is among the best.

His Drama­

In 1773 he produced the tragedy of Cato. It shows that Addison , whatever his other qualities may be , is no dramatist. It is written in laborious blank verse, in which wooden character devlaim long, dull speeches. But it caught the ear of the political parties.

Addison also attempted an Opera Rosamond (1707), which was a failure and the prose comedy  ‘The Drummer’ (1715) adds nothing to his reputation.

His Prose

Addison started writing with his school and college friend Steele in ‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator. In The Spectator Addison rapidly became the dominating spirit, wrote  274 essays out of a complete total of 555. In march 1713 Addison assisted Steele with ‘The Guardian’ which Steele began.

Addison wrote nearly   4  hundred essays , which are of nearly uniform length, excellence of style and the wide diversity of subject, they are faithful reflection to the life. His aim was to point out those vices which are too trivial for a chastened of the law. Literary criticism of a mild and curious kind , found a prominent place in his essays.

some times he adopted the allegory as a means of throwing his ideas vividly before his readers, and so we have a popular ‘The Vision of a Mirza’ and the political allegory of Public Credit.

      _{Sir Richard Steele  (1672-1729)}

His Drama

He wrote some prose comedies, the best of which are ‘The Funeral’(1701)

·      ‘The Lying Loner’(1703)

·      ‘The Tender Husband’(1705)  and

·      ‘The Conscious Lovers’(1722)

His essays

it is as a miscellaneous essayist that Steele finds his place in literature.

He started ‘The Tatler’ in 1709 and ‘The Spectator’ in 1711, and several other periodicals such as

Ø ‘The Guardian’ (1713)

Ø ‘The English Man’ (1713)

Ø ‘The Reader’ (1714) and

Ø ‘The Plebeian’ (1719)

The aim of Steele’s essays was frankly didactic, he desired to bring about a reformation of contemporary society manners and is notable for his consistent advocacy of womanly virtue and the ideal of gentleman of courtesy, chivalry and good taste. His essay on children are charming and he is full of human sympathy.

In versatility and in originality he is at least Addison’s equal. His humour is broader. His pathos is more attractive and more humane. He is incapable of irony.

Daniel Defoe

Ø    Biography

Much of Defoe’s life is still undetermined. He was born in London in the year 1660.   He altered his original surname foe to Defoe. He became a soldier, and then took journalism.

  As a young man, Daniel Defoe was a great traveller and went all over Europe. his career had ups and downs and he was also put into prison several times.

When he was nearly sixty, Defoe started writing novels. He was considered to be founder of English novels.

Ø    His prose

His work can be divided into two greater groups.

1 political Writing=

Like most of the other writer of his time Defoe turned out a mass of political tracts and pamphlets. Many of them appeared in his own journal ‘The Review’ which issued in 1704.

His ‘The Shortest Way with the Dissenters’ (1702) brought upon him official wrath, and caused him to be fined, imprisoned and pilloried.

 The best known of this class is ‘The True-born Englishman (1701).

In all his propaganda Defoe in vigorous and acute and he has a fair command of irony and invective.

2 his fiction=

his work in fiction were all produced in the later part of his life, at almost Incredible speed.

First came

v‘Robinson Crusoe’ (1719)

v‘Duncan Campbell’(1720)

v‘Memoirs of cavellier’(1720)
\

v‘Captain Singleton’(1720) all this books appeared in 1720, in 1722 appeared

v‘Moll Flanders’

v‘A  journal to the plague year’

v‘Colonel Jacque’  then

v‘Roxana’ (1724) and

v‘A New Voyage round the World’

This great body of fiction has grave defect, largely due to the immense speed with which it was produced. The general plan of the snovel in each also loose and unequal.

At its best in finest part in Robinson Crusoe, his writing has a realm that is rarely approached by the most ardent of modern realists. This is achieved by Defoe’s grasp of details and his unerring sense of their supreme literary value, a swift and resolute narrative method and a plain and matter of fact style that inevitable lays incredulity asleep.

To this development of the novel Defoe’s contribution is priceless.

Poetry

Alexander Pope   (1688-1744)

His life

Pope was brn in London, the only son of a considerable city tradesman. From his birth two conditions were influence very deeply the career of the future poet , first he was puny and delicate and secondly, he was baptized into  the roman catholic faith. His bodily infirmity, which amounted almost deformity, caused him to be privately educated.

Pope’s religious faith, though he was never excessively devout as a roman catholic , closed to him all the careers , professional and political , in which a man of keen intelligence might have been expected to succeed. From his earliest youth we find him passionately desirous of making his name as an author.

His early verses , admirably attuned to the ear of the age, brought him recognition and applause. His translation of homer brought him wealth and from that point he nrver looked back .he became the dominating poetical personality of the day. In 1719 he removed to his house at Twickenham. It remained his home till “that long disease , his life” was finished in 1744.

His poetry

Pope’s earliest important work was his Pastorals. These poems almost certainly written before he was eighteen, were published in 1709. The characters and scenery, based as they are on Classical models, lack vigorous and    reality. but the work is important as an experiment in verse technique. Pope has already choose  his medium , the Heroic couplet , which is here handled  with great metrical skill, variation of speed and tone and delicacy of touch. The rich discriptions are perhaps over loaded with epithet. And the diction is often artificial . we give a specimen of his earliest number.

And yet my numbers please the rural throng,Rough satyrs dance, and pan applauds the song;The nymph, forsaking ev’ry cave and spring,Their early fruit, and milk white turtled bring,Each am’rous nymph prefers her gift in vain,On you their gifts are all bestowed again,For you the swains the fairest flow’rs design,And in one garland all their beauties joined,Accept the wreath which you deserve alone,In whom all beauties are compri’d in one.

                                                   Summer: the second pastoral

In 1711 appeared ‘An Essay on Criticism’ also written in heroic couplet . the poem professes to set  forth the gospel of wit  and nature  as it applies to the  literature of the age. There is no attempt at originality of thought , pope’s aim being  merely  to restate the code of the ancients. This he does with  a conscious  and epi-grammatic neatness which has given his remarks the permanence of proverbs. I give below four well-known examples.

ü A Little Learning is a Dangerous thing!

ü And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art

ü TO err is Human, to Forgive, divine

ü True wit is nature to advantage  dressed;

What of was though , but ne’er so well expressed.

        
  Windsor Forest (1713) is another pastoral in the familiar meter.

                 

  In 1712 was published  the first version of  ‘The Rape Of the Lock’ one of the most brilliant poems in the language. It is in mock-heroic strain, and its effectiveness  was greatly increased when , in 1714 pope added  the machinery  of the sylph to the original version. For the most part, this satire is gentle and good humoured , though occasionally the half-line of couplet give us a foretaste of the most incisive tones of the later pope.

          
Then pope translated Iliad , the Iliad  was followed in 1725 and 1726 by the Oddyssey.

          
Between 1731 and 1735 pope pope published a series of philosophical poems, including

§  ‘TO Lord Bathrust’

§  ‘Of the use of Riches’

§  ‘Of the knowledge and characters of men’

§  ‘Of the character of women’ and most famous of all

§  “An Essay on Man”, in which he discussed man’s place in the universe.

The years 1733 to1737 marks pope’s last important period of production. In them appeared his ‘Imitations of Horace’, in using the latin satirist as his model.

His famous prologue “Prologue to the Satirists”, better known by it’s other title, “Epistle to dr. Arbuthnot” (1735) contains some of his most brilliant  and finished work. The style shows the ultimate development of pope’s couplet in its ease, naturalness and versatility.

        Both in subjects and in style his poems are limited. They take people of their own social class, and they deal with their common  interests and aspirations. Pope rarely dips below the surface, and when he does so he is not at his best. With regards to his style we have seen that it is almost wholly restricted to the heroic couplet, used in narrative and didactive  subject.

        Within these limits his work is powerful and effective. The wit is keen, the satire burns like acid, and his zeal is unshakable.

                   Above all he was a great artist. A study of his technique shows a meticulous sense of the exact word in the exact place.

          Pope’s use of the heroic couplet marks a great change from Dryden. The couplet is tighter and more compressed.

THUS, we can Thus say that Alexander Pope was truly was one very important figure of the Neo-Classical age.

vConclusion

Thus, Swift, Addison, Steele, Defoe, Pope and many other writer gave their immense contribution to English literature.